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SANTA BARBARA 



Santa Barbara 


AND OTHER STORIES 


BY 

“OUIDA” 

AUTHOR OR 

“ Under Two Flags,” “ The Tower of Taddeo,” “ Guilderoy,” etc. 



NEW YORK 

STREET & SMITH 

238 William Street 


T\% r l (c^ 

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; the; l; 8r ary of 
CONGRESS, 

Two Coc'ltd RECEIVED 

OCT, 7 1901 

Copyright entry 

'&<U. 7. tQo/ 

CLASS XXo. No. 

/W<TC 

COPY □. 

jm imiii — mmmtmmrn »— i 


Copyright, 1891, 

By UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY 


Copyright, 1901, 

By STREET & SMITH 


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CONTENTS. 

»A(SB 

Santa Barbara, 7 

Poussette, ........ 69 

Rinaldo, IOI 

The Halt, 181 

The Stable-Boy, ....... 203 

La Rossiccia, 237 



SANTA BARBARA. 


Do you know San Francesco della Vigna, 
in Venice ? 

Some say that its tall tower is the first 
point rising above the waves, which the re- 
turning Venetian sailor sees as he comes 
homeward from the southeast, over the foam- 
ing bars of Chioggia and Malamocco, one 
slender shaft lifted against the sky, calling 
him back to his city and his home. All the 
mariners and fishermen, who come and go 
over the Adrian waters, have an especial ten- 
derness, an especial reverence, for Saint 
Francis of the Vineyard. There is no vine- 
yard now ; only one small square garden, 
with a cloister running round it, arched, col- 
umned, marble paved, where the dead lie un- 
der the worn smooth slabs, and the box-edges 
hem in thyme, and balsams, and basil, and 
carnations, and thrift, and saxifrage, and other 
homely hardy plants which need slight foster- 


10 


SANTA BARBARA. 


ing care. The sea-winds blow strongly there, 
and the sea-fogs drift thickly, and the steam 
and smoke of the foundries round about hang 
in heavy clouds, where once the pavilions and 
the lawns and the terraces of the patricians of 
Venice touched the gray-green lagoon ; but 
this garden of San Francesco is still sweet 
and fresh : shut in between its marble colon- 
nades with the deep brown shadow of the 
church leaning over it, and the chiming of the 
bells, and the melody of the organ rolling 
above it in deep waves of sound, jarred some- 
times by the clash of the hammers falling on 
the iron and the copper of the foundries near 
at hand, and sometimes sinking to a sweet si- 
lence, only softly stirred by the splash of an oar 
as a boat passes up or down the narrow canal. 

For the sake of that cloistered garden, a 
gondola came one summer every day to the 
landing-place before San Francesco. In the 
gondola was an artist, a painter of Paris, 
Yvon Dorat, who had seen the spot, and 
liked it, and returned to paint from it every 
day, finding an inexpressible charm in its con- 
trasts of gloom and light, of high brown walls 
and low-lying graves, of fresh green herbs and 
flowers, and melancholy immemorial marble 
aisles. He meant to make a great picture of 


SANTA BARBARA. 


II 


it, with the ethereal Venetian sky above all, 
and, between the straight edges of the box, 
a solitary monk passing thoughtfully. Dor&t 
was under the charm of Venice: that subtle 
dreamy charm, voluptuous and yet spiritual, 
which no artist or poet ever can resist, and 
these summer months were to him as a vision 
of languor, and beauty and rest, in which the 
white wings of sea-birds, and the silver of 
gleaming waters, and the festal figures of Car* 
paccio and the golden warmth of Palma Vec- 
chio, and the glories of sunsets aflame behind 
the Euganean hills, and the mystery of moon- 
light nights, with the tide washing against the 
weed-grown piles of a Madonna of the lagoon, 
were all blended in that confusion of past and 
present, of art and nature, of desire and re- 
pose, which fills the soul and the senses of 
those who love Venice, and live in thrall to 
her. 

Dor&t was young enough to feel this spell 
profoundly, and old enough to be glad that he 
could feel it, and to welcome it as a lingering 
breath of youth, as in the heat of the midsum- 
mer nights he welcomed a stray breeze blow- 
ing down from the Paduan hills, across the 
still waters by Murano. In Paris he was fa- 
mous, wearied, feverish, sated: in Venice he 


12 


SANTA BARBARA. 


was a student still, a pupil still, a lover of all 
lovely things, content to sit at the feet of 
Titian, and Giorgione ; happy to dream his 
days away where silver sunlight poured 
through a canopy of vine-leaves on a group 
of naked children, playing like young dolphins 
in green water, or a fleet of boats, red, yel- 
low, orange, ruddy as so many flames, glided 
by a grassy isle, or ruined marble mole. 

In Paris he could not live a day without all 
the refinements and ingenuities of what some 
call vice, and some call pleasure; in Venice 
he was content merely de s' dcouter vivre , 
dreamily, and harmlessly, penetrated with 
that divinity of beauty, which is the very life- 
blood of the true artist, and that humility 
which alone contains the germ of greatness. 

“ Je me sens si jeune ici,” he wrote to a 
friend in Paris: “ Je me retrempe corps et 
ame dans cet air pur, dans ces eaux ensoleil- 
lees. Laissez crier les gueuses et les cabo- 
tines, je n’ai pas besoin d’elles ; j’ai la Sainte 
Barbara qui se donne a moi.” 

And he had come to the cloister of San 
Francesco every morning for a fortnight, to 
portray its cool grays, and browns, and 
whites, its simple green leaves, its poor lone- 
ly monks, he who was wont to enrapture 


SANTA BARBARA. 


13 


Paris with pictures of nude women and 
drunken revellers, and daring visions of 
Greek and Egyptian orgies, and scenes of 
oriental sensuality, and strange landscapes 
burning with the scorch of Asia and of Africa. 

He meant to call this picture merely “ Le 
Passe.” The pavement of flat moss-grown 
tombs, the shadow of the high church, the 
homely fragrant flowers, the peaceful colon- 
nades, did they not embody in them, and 
symbolize all that the modern world has lost 
of science, of leisure, of simplicity, and of 
faith ? He had no faith of any sort, but he 
envied those who could still bask in its illu- 
sions : and in a solitary house, upon the 
dreary moors of Morbihan, with stormy seas 
boiling between black rocks and long winters 
enshrouding the cruel coasts in mist and 
snow, his mother, a lone woman, prayed for 
him night and day. All his great triumphs 
had been but as mere terrible forecasts of 
hell to her superstitious piety, and on none 
of his works had her pained eyes borne to 
look ; this picture of the past should be paint- 
ed for her, he thought, since to her, as to the 
monks, the past was still a present and its le- 
gend a reality. 

It was the harmonious proportions of its 


14 SANTA BARBARA. 

colonnades and the subdued sweetness of 
color in its garden which had first drawn 
him there : of its symbolism he had only 
thought later, one day when the chanting of 
the lays within the church had come to his 
ear ; they had been singing from a mass of 
Palestrina’s. It is only in the old obscure 
churches of old historic towns that one can 
still hear all the beautiful music of the old 
masters, whose scores lie dust-covered, yel- 
low, and moth-eaten, in organ-lofts and sacris- 
ties, their melody left mute and neglected be- 
tween the leaves, while the world runs after 
braying chords and borrowed motives which 
have dethroned melody. 

It was August, and August is very warm 
in Venice; all that wide shadeless plain of 
shallow rippling sea draws down and reflects 
tenfold the sun, as in a mirror, and there is 
no retreat from the heat except inside the 
water-gates of the palaces or behind the 
leathern curtains of the churches ; out of 
doors, everywhere, even under the deep vault 
of the Rialto bridge or under the drooping 
trees of San Trovasio the strong heat pene- 
trates; and here in the cloister of Saint Fran- 
cis at noonday Dor&t, who had ceased to 
paint because the light was too strong, and 


SANTA BARBARA. 


15 


who was unwilling to leave the place as yet, 
felt his eyelids grow heavy and his hand be- 
come slow to obey him. 

All things invited to repose; the cool mar- 
ble parapet of the cloisters, the drowsy hum 
of the bees rifling the stocks and carnations, 
the monotonous chant of the choristers re- 
peating their lesson, the silence which pre- 
vailed everywhere else, for at midday the 
foundry hammers ceased ; and Dorat, resist- 
ing his indolent impulses but a moment, 
strolled to the cloister on his left, and threw 
himself down on the marble ledge in the 
shadow. There he in another moment fell 
asleep, the hum of the bees and the hymn of 
the choristers lulling him to slumber as a 
song sung low lulls a child. Soon the chant- 
ing ceased, and all was completely still. 
There was no sound except his own even 
breathing and the buzzing of the bees in the 
little garden ; the monks were mumbling over 
their midday fish and bread in their refectory ; 
the sun poured down on the brown brick wall 
of the church, and the flowers drooped under 
the strength of its . rays. Dorat slept on un- 
disturbed, his head on his arm, his limbs out- 
stretched, his head, handsome as the Anti- 
nous of Canova, his face pale from the habits 


1 6 SANTA BARBARA. 

of his life, his slender and graceful limbs in- 
dolently posed as he dreamed on in complete 
unconsciousness. 

From a crevice in the marble beneath him 
a little head peeped out, and a darksome form 
crept toward him; not the gay green inno- 
cent frolicksome shape of the lizard, but the 
wicked black head of an adder. In these old 
walls all manner of poisonous as of harmless 
creatures dwell, and no seat or couch is more 
dangerous than the rest which an old wall 
in Italy offers to the tired and thoughtless 
traveller. 

All snakes, large and small, love the noon 
sun ; and this adder came out after the man- 
ner of her kind allured by the basking heat. 
Did she know what she did, or did she not 
know ? Who can tell ? Man knows what 
he does when he slays ; but these others — 
who can say that they know what they do, 
though often they are wiser than we ? She 
looked out of her hole and enjoyed the great 
heat which fell on her flat pointed head ; and 
then she emerged more fully into the light, 
and saw the hand of a man which hung down 
over the ledge of marble and lay idly on the 
ground ; the slender supple delicate hand of 
the artist which creates beautiful things and 


SANTA BARBARA. 


17 


has power in all its fingers to call up visible 
scenes from worlds unseen by his fellows. 
Then it seemed good to the adder to touch 
this hand, and she crept close to it on her 
belly and wound herself carefully round it 
and upward to the wrist. But her touch and 
her clasp were so light that the sleeper did 
not awaken, and she drew her head back as 
a child recoils before making a leap, and 
darted her tongue out like a little arrow of 
death, and showed her double range of fine 
small teeth like pins. 

But before those teeth could reach and 
penetrate the flesh, another hand seized her 
by the throat, gripping her so tightly that she 
could not move, and threw her on the ground, 
and then with a stone killed her. The noise 
of the stone falling on the marble pavement 
awoke Dor&t ; he raised himself on his left 
arm, and looked with astonished eyes up into 
the white warm light above him. 

“ Santa Barbara ! ” he murmured ; for the 
woman who stood above him resembled mar- 
vellously that picture which he loved, and 
which he had gazed on that morning for the 
hundredth time where it hangs in the shadow 
of the side altar in the church of Sta Maria 
Formosa, 


i8 


SANTA BARBARA. 


“ It is bad to sleep upon old walls, they 
harbor dangerous beasts,” said the woman, 
gravely, in the soft liquid Venetian accents. 
“ See, Signor, I killed her, or very surely she 
would have killed you.” 

“ You have done me a service indeed; I 
was asleep and dreaming of Sta Barbara,” 
said Dorat ; he was still but half awake, and 
he looked dreamily at the little black crushed 
adder lying on a slab of discolored marble. 
Was it possible ? One touch from that small 
creature, one drop of venom from its fangs, 
and all the power of his brain and cunning of 
his hand might have been dulled and dead 
forever ! 

The idea seemed so strange to him that he 
was absorbed by it for a moment. The next 
his eyes, still dim and heavy with slumber in 
the heat, saw only the face of his saviour, a 
face like Sta Barbara’s, of the old noble warm- 
hued Venetian type, with strength as well as 
beauty in its lines, and dusky golden hair, 
and a mouth like a carnation. She was a 
woman of the people, she had a black shawl 
worn over her head as Venetian women so 
often wear one ; a linen bodice and a woollen 
skirt ; but these poor clothes could not com 
ceal the magnificent lines of her form and the 


SANTA BARBARA. 


19 


mingled grace and strength of her limbs ; 
while her throat and bosom and arms were 
those of Veronese’s Europa. 

“ All the types in one ! ” he murmured to 
himself, feasting his eyes on this incarnation 
of womanhood till the ardor and abstraction 
of his gaze called up a vivid blush over the 
cheeks and brows of the young matron, who, 
half offended, half diverted, frowned and 
laughed and turned away. “ By the Virgin, 
how you stare, ’llustrissima ! ” she murmured, 
as she drew her shawl closer about her breast. 
“ It is well for you that my man is away over 
the seas.” 

The homely words recalled Dorat to him- 
self ; he- rose and thanked her warmly for the 
service she had done him, and begged to 
know to whom his debt of life was owing. 

“ I am Veronica Venier, and my husband 
is Zuan Tron,” she answered. “ Yes, Vene- 
tians both, what else should we be ? I live 
close by, in the Campiello dei Merli, where 
the well is, with the marble angels ; they say 
it is very old, and people come and sketch it. 
You are a painter too ? ” 

“ I am,” said Dorat, “ and I may come 
and see the well with the angels ? ” 

“ Surely, it is in the Campo ;■ it is not mine, 


20 


SANTA BARBARA. 


Anyone may see it. But why do you lie and 
sleep here ? Why are you not at home if you 
wish to sleep ? ” 

" The heat overcame me, and but for you 
I might have awakened from my siesta only 
to sleep forever in the grave. May I ask 
how you came here, in a monkish sanctu- 
ary ? ” 

“ I came to bring some linen to Cattina, 
the sacristan’s wife ; and she gave me leave 
to gather some lavender ; I often come here ; 
the monks say nothing.” 

“ They would indeed cease to be men if 
they could object ! ” 

The calm deep blue eyes of Veronica 
gazed at him without comprehension of the 
compliment. 

If she seemed Barbara and Europa to him, 
he seemed to her a being of another world, 
so delicate, so slender, so sweet-voiced, so 
unlike the gondoliers and boatmen and sailors 
who made up her family and her neighbor- 
hood and her world. She stood a moment, 
reflecting, in the hot sunlight with her bare 
feet on the marble pavement and the tawny 
gold of her coiled hair burnished in the light. 
Then she stooped and picked up a bundle of 
lavender which she had dropped when she 


SANTA BAXBAKA. 


21 


had seized and stoned the adder, and nodded 
her head in farewell. 

“ Do not sleep on old walls again,” she 
said, carelessly ; and turned to leave the 
cloister. 

“Wait a moment,” murmured Dorat; 
“ tell me where I can find the Campiello.” 

“ Three turns from here, one to the left 
and then two to the right ; you cannot miss 
it.” 

“And take this,” he added, as he slid his 
watch into her hand ; “ take this, to remind 
you that I owe it to your courage and pres- 
ence of mind if time has not wholly ceased to 
exist for me.” 

She took the watch and gazed at it in ad- 
miration ; it was a gold chronometer of great 
value ; but after looking on it in admiration 
for a moment she gave it back to him. 

“ I want nothing,” she said, with some 
coldness. “You owe me nothing either; 
and if Zuan were to hear that I took pay- 
ment for doing my duty he would give me 
the rope’s end when he came home.” 

“ The brute ! ” muttered Dorat, but he did 
not force his gift or his presence on her. 

“ I will give you some other memorial 
of this morning,” he said with tender grace 


22 


SANTA BARBARA . 


as he raised her hand to his lips and kissed 
it reverently. That action surprised and 
pleased her; she felt the homage of it and 
its difference from the rough wooing of Zuan 
Tron. 

“ Adde ! ” she said to him, drawing her 
hand away : and with her sheaf of lavender 
in her arms she went out of the cloister. 

Then he let her go, watching her superb 
walk as she passed through the garden with 
that mingling of poetic analysis and of sen- 
sual desire which, together and inseparable, 
characterize every artistic temperament. 

Dor&t was accustomed to leave his easel 
and canvas and colors with the sacristan of 
San Francesco ; when he left them there this 
day an hour or two later, he questioned the 
old man as to the history of Veronica, the 
wife of Tron. The man had little to say in 
answer ; she was the daughter of Ruffo Ve- 
nier, a coppersmith; Tron was a working 
sailor in a coasting brig. They were poor 
folks ; she was not twenty years old ; she 
had had one child, it was dead ; she was a 
handsome wench, yes, but there were others 
as good to look at, and in the Campo the 
neighbors thought that she gave herself airs ; 
what sort of man was Tron ? well enough, 


SANTA BARBARA. 


23 


honest, hard-working, good, but violent, and 
apt to be jealous ; he had only sailed two 
days before with wood for Greece ; those 
brigs were slow but sure. Then the sacris- 
tan pocketed a fee and took in the easel, and 
a little later said to his wife that Veronica 
had saved a foreigner from an adder’s bite. 

“ More fool she,” said his wife ; “ we never 
do a stroke of good in this world but what it 
turns against us and comes and bites us.” 

“ That is true,” said the sacristan, washing 
Dorat’s brushes, “ but,” he added with a 
chuckle, “ this adder will be more likely to 
bite Tron.” 

In the afternoon Dorat walked down the 
street of the Merceria, that busy crowded 
narrow alley which has some looks and sounds 
of the bazaars of the East in its color and 
confusion, and entered a jewellers shop well 
known to him ; a dusky den where gold and 
silver, coral and agate, pearls and diamonds, 
and all kinds of filagree work in precious 
metals shone and gleamed in the deep shad- 
ows. 

Thence he selected a necklace of great 
price from its purity of ore and rarity of 
workmanship ; a gold serpent so flexible that 
it curled like a living snake and seemed ah 


24 


SANTA BARBARA. 


most imbued with life as its emerald eyes 
sparkled in the dark. He paid for it and put 
it loosely in his pocket, refusing the case in 
which the jeweller wished to enclose it. 
Then he went to his gondola waiting at the 
water steps between the pillars of the Piaz- 
zetta. An hour or two later, as the heat of 
the day cooled, he had the gondola moored 
to the ring in the landing stair of the Cam- 
piello dei Merli, an abandoned little square, 
one of those green places where, in the Ven- 
ice of old, the citizens used to keep their 
sheep ; surrounded now on three sides by 
palaces gone to ruin, and having in its centre 
the well with two kneeling angels, of which 
she had spoken, which was said or supposed 
to be the work of Tullio Lombardo. 

Poor people alone occupied these once 
noble houses ; their rags of many colors flut- 
tered from the ogive windows, and naked 
babies tumbled in numbers on the short turf. 
His Barbara, his Europa, lived here! To 
Dorat, used to luxury and ease, it seemed an 
outrage against nature and against art, that 
a creature so beautiful should dwell in such 
squalor and in penury, with all the meagre 
and dull atmosphere of poverty. 

“ Can I see Veronica Venier, the wife of the 


SANTA BARBARA. 


25 


sailor Tron?” he asked the people of the 
Campo who had come to gaze at him. They 
answered Yes, and her name, abbreviated into 
’Nica ! ’Nica ! awoke the echoes of the old 
dilapidated walls. She came in answer out of 
an arched stone portico, her head uncovered, 
shading her eyes with her hand from the blaze 
of the sunset light ; he thought that she had 
expected him, for her clothes were of a better 
kind than those which she had worn in the 
morning, and in her breast there was a knot 
of red carnations. 

I have come to see the angels of the well,” 
said Dorat, softly, “ and also to bring you this 
little thing in memory of to-day.” 

She was leaning against the marble side 
of the well, and the neighbors and children 
were gathered round, staring and listening, 
as Dorat with a sudden movement which took 
her utterly by surprise clasped the golden 
snake about her throat. 

“ Ah,” she cried, quickly, and with that 
quick rush of blood under her fair skin which 
made her beauty so much greater. 

Dorat, turning to the neighbors, said : 
“ She saved my life from a snake this morn- 
ing ; is it not fit she should wear its souvenir ? 
And snakes bring good fortune, they say.” 


20 


SANTA BARBARA . 


“ Good fortune, indeed/’ grumbled one old 
crone, “ if they hang your neck about with 
gold ! ” 

Veronica, raising her arms, tried to unclasp 
the gold snake from her throat, but in vain ; 
it had closed with a spring and her fingers 
could not find its secret. Dorat, smiling, stood 
and watched her unavailing efforts. 

“ Do not be unkind to me,” he murmured, 
“it is but a trifle, a toy ; keep it, I entreat 
you. It has a grander place there than if it 
were on the throat of any princess. Keep it 
in memory of me.” 

Veronica stood irresolute ; a beautiful fig 
ure with her raised hands still behind her 
throat, and shadows of longing, of irresolu 
tion, of pleasure, of fear, of embarrassment, 
and of natural pride all passing over her ex- 
pressive countenance, while the children hung 
on her skirts to stare, and a clove pink fell 
from her breast on the stones. Dor&t stooped 
and took up the flower. Then, being an un- 
erring artist in the arts of life and of love, as 
in his art of painting, he gave her no chance 
to repent or to refuse, no opportunity to de- 
bate or to protest, but bowed low to her as to 
any great lady and left the Campiello while 
she still stood irresolute, the golden adder 


SANTA BARBARA. 


2 7 


clasped about her throat ; the children and 
the women clamorous around her, and on 
either side the angels of the well kneeling 
with folded wings as the sculptor had left them 
there three hundred years before. 

Veronica stood there as in a dream, listen* 
ing to the soft splash of the gondolier’s oar as 
he descended the narrow side-canal, now 
tinted with all colors and glowing with the 
crimson reflections from the western skies. 

The carnation dropped from Dorat’s hold 
into the water as he shifted the cushions to 
stretch himself at ease. 

Poor women in Italy often possess jewelry 
that is both good and handsome, as heirlooms, 
or as marriage portions, but Veronica came of 
people too poor for her to own anything more 
than the silver earrings which Zuan Tron had 
given her on her bridal day. Her father and 
brothers were workers in one of the smelting 
furnaces ; and Tron was but a common sailor 
who brought home little from his voyages ; 
she had a room or two which she shared with 
Tron’s sister, and she made a little money for 
herself by washing linen. Her name was the 
old ducal name of the Venier ; and, maybe, 
she had their blood in her ; maybe her an- 
cestors had worn the pearl-sown robes and 


28 


SANTA BARBARA. 


golden bugole of Dogaresse, and gone in 
state to hear mass at San Marco ; but, if so, 
the traditions of such grandeur were all lost 
under the accumulation of the centuries, and in 
the darkness of ignorance and poverty. She 
was only a poor sailor’s wife ; a woman who 
beat linen with wood in the canal-water and 
hung it on a cord to dry. 

Therefore the golden adder made her heart 
leap in her bosom with elation and triumph ; 
and yet — and yet — she was a proud woman ; 
and an innocent woman ; it was not well for 
her to keep it, she knew that. 

When she unclasped it from her throat at 
night, she laid it on her pillow ; and all the 
night she could not rest. 

It was a night of rainless storm ; the heav- 
ens were filled with lightning ; and the vivid 
flashes came through her unshuttered case- 
ment, and lit up the little snake with its em- 
erald eyes, as it lay on the rough hempen 
pillow where the rude head of Zuan Tron had 
so often reposed. With the first flush of 
morning she slipped the necklace in het 
breast, and went out and finished her wash- 
ing, and spread the linen on the stones of the 
Campo to dry. 

Then when it was noonday she took her 


SANTA BARBARA. 


29 


way to the cloister of San Francesco. Do- 
rat was again there painting ; he saw her en- 
trance with a smile ; he mistook her errand ; 
he felt a passing irritation, a vague distaste ; 
he did not care for a woman who offered her- 
self. 

“ She might have waited,” he thought, as 
he rose with some words of welcome and 
flattery. 

But she did not heed his words ; she took 
the gold adder out of her bosom and held it 
toward him. 

“ It is beautiful,” she said, with a hot color 
in her cheeks, “ but it is not for me ; give it 
to your dama ; I want no payment.” 

Dorat was so surprised that for an instant 
he was silent, gazing at her in stupor ; a 
woman forego a jewel ! — she could not be in 
earnest. 

“ I will not take it,” he said, angrily, “ it is 
yours. Throw it in the canal if you choose.” 
Then, as the sun, shining on her, showed 
him the full splendor of • her fair skin, her 
burnished hair, her flower-like lips, his tone 
melted and changed, and grew passionate and 
supplicating. “ Keep it, keep it, not in pay- 
ment, but in remembrance. Did you not save 
my life from that little poisonous black beast ? 


30 


SANTA BARBARA . 


I have no dama ; all women that I have pos- 
sessed are as nothing now that I have seen 
you. Do you know how great your own 
beauty is ? ” 

Veronica heard him with a vague terror, 
but with a strong confused sense of power 
and of pleasure. Men had told her often of 
her beauty ; but not in this way, or in these 
words. 

“ I cannot take it,” she repeated with em- 
barrassment, clinging to that one idea which 
had brought her thither, and powerless to ex- 
press her feelings, as the uneducated always 
are. “ I cannot take it. Tron would see it 
when he comes home and he would beat me. 
I came only to bring it back here, because 
you are a stranger and I know not where you 
dwell, or where you lodge even here. There 
is no need for you to have any gratitude. I 
merely took the little beast off your hand. 
Cattina would have done the same had she 
been near.” 

Dorat looked at her in silence ; he won- 
dered if her rejection of it was sincere ; he 
believed but very little in the words of any 
woman. 

“ If you be too proud to take a gift from 
me,” he said, with affected mortification, 


SANTA BARBARA. 


3i 


“ will you be content to earn it ? You can do 
so easily.” 

Her large calm eyes, the eyes of the Sta 
Barbara, lightened with pleasure and expec- 
tation. 

“ Earn it ? But I could never earn it ! you 
mean, I suppose, by washing your linen ; but 
it would take years.” 

“ No ; you can earn it in a week, if you 
will.” 

“ How ? ” 

Unconsciously to herself, her whole face 
spoke the wistfulness and eagerness of her 
longing for this toy ; her breath came and 
went rapidly ; her whole form seemed tremu- 
lous with a childlike yet passionate desire. 

“ Let me make a portrait of you,” said 
Dor&t, simply. 

“ Of me ? But I am nothing ! ” she ex- 
claimed in her ignorance and her surprise. 
“ Why should you want to make a picture of 
me ? ” 

Dorat smiled ; he saw her words were quite 
sincere. 

“ Because you are a beautiful woman,” he 
answered ; “ you do not seem to know it or 
to care about it, but it is so. If you will come 
to me a few hours now and then, you will 


32 


SANTA BARBARA. 


have more than earned the necklace, since 
you wish to earn it ; and your husband, when 
he sees it, will have no cause to blame you. 
Will you not do this little thing for me ? ” 

“ Perhaps/’ she said, slowly and doubt- 
ingly, for the idea was strange to her ; she 
was of the city of Tintoretto and of Titian, 
but of pictures she knew nothing, though she 
knelt before them sometimes and said her 
prayers. 

“ You wish me to come here ? ” she asked. 
“ Here at first if you please,” said Dorat, 
and he looked away from her as he spoke, 
“ but afterward you must come to my studio. 
I cannot finish a portrait in the open air.” 

“ But you are making this picture of the 
garden in the open air ? ” 

“ This is different. Tell me, will you let 
me paint your portrait ? Just as I saw you 
first, standing with the sun shining about your 
head and the sheaf of lavender lying at your 
feet. All the great world shall see it, and 
will see in it that the women of Palma Vec- 
chio and of the Veronese live still in Venice.” 

She was silent ; the world conveyed no 
sense to her ; she had never been farther 
over the waters than to the islands of Murano 
and of Mazzarbo when the fruit was ripe, and*. 


SANTA BARBARA. 


33 


though she was a mariner’s wife, she did not 
understand what other countries and other 
nations meant. But she understood that 
Dor&t thought her beautiful ; and she would 
not have been a woman born of a woman if 
she had not felt a thrill of that consciousness 
in her innermost being. 

“ You will come? ” said Dor&t, softly. 

“ Yes,” she said, slowly, “I will come.” 

“ And you will keep the necklace ? ” 

“Not till I have earned it.” 

From that resolution he could not move 
her ; she would not take the little golden 
snake till she had earned it, though her whole 
soul sighed for it. 

He had perforce to let her go that day, for 
she was in haste, being wanted by her sister- 
in-law. 

“You will come back to-morrow?” he 
asked, persuasively. 

“Yes, to-morrow,” she said, calmly ; and 
then with her “ Adde, ’cellenza,” she went 
away from him across the sunlight down the 
marble arcade of the cloister. 

Dor&t watched her with languid eyes, 
amorous and yet cold ; he was a man who 
could wait. He put the gold adder in one of 
the drawers of his color-box ; one day very 


34 


SANTA BARBARA . 


soon it would be round her throat ; what mat- 
ter a day sooner or a day later when one is 
certain to succeed at last ? 

And yet the calm noble simplicity of her in 
her strength and beauty sank with a certain 
profoundness of impression into his mind, 
sated, selfish, and sensual though it was. 
“ She is a grand creature,” he thought, “ des- 
pite all her ignorance and poverty and her 
frankness of desire for that jewelled toy.” 

He painted very little that day, but sat and 
dreamed in the sweetness of the garden, 
dreams of things which his youth had de- 
sired, and the visions of which had been hus- 
tled and hurried away by the rush of those 
passions and follies and ambitions and achieve- 
ments which had filled his years since the 
world had made him famous. 

“ Santa Barbara se donne h moi,” he mur- 
mured, recalling the words of his letter to his 
friend. “ Je ne croyais pas avoir si bien dit ! ” 

And within a yard or two of him the little 
dead body of the adder lay under the saxi- 
frage leaves whither the sacristan had swept 
it with his broom the day before ; a sun-dried, 
wrinkled, shrivelled littk thing, looking like 
a small burnt branch, a shred of leather. Its 
work was done. 


SANTA BARBARA. 


35 


The picture of the cloister and the garden 
was laid aside, and waited, with its canvas 
turned to the wall, in the sacristan’s room. 

The portrait of Veronica grew in its stead, 
a portrait taken in the fulness of the day- 
light with that strong sunshine shed over it 
in which Dorat excelled ; the marble pave- 
ment under her feet, the rosy saxifrage and 
the yellow tiger lilies behind her, and above 
all the blue sky with boughs of oleander in 
white blossom crossing it. 

“The pose is a little too much like Sta 
Barbara’s, and the pate a little too much like 
Cabanel’s,” thought Dorat, who was quickly 
disenchanted with his own creations. “ It is 
not a Titian nor a Veronese; it is only a 
Bouguereau ! ” 

But it was beautiful, and it was not the 
portrait which he wanted to gain, but the 
woman ; he was an artist indeed, but he was 
beyond all a voluptuary. 

Seven mornings she came to the garden in 
the warmth of the forenoon, and stood for 
him with the sacristan’s wife and children 
looking on, and the monks, who were sociable 
and not hermits, came now and then also down 
the middle aisle and talked of what was being 
done as became friars who had paintings of 


3 ^ 


SANTA BARBARA. 


Gian Bellini and the Veronese on the walls 
of their church hard by ; the gardener monk 
who came thither with his spade, and rake, 
and shears, and water-pot, was in especial 
eloquent. 

“ It would make an altarpiece, my son, and 
you might give it to us,” he said, “only you 
have put such a profane look into it ; it will 
not be a holy picture if you do not correct 
that ; and myself I wonder why you paint 
new things at all ; the chromo-lithographs in 
the shops under the Procuratie are so very 
fine ; there is a reduction of the ‘ Assumption ’ 
of our Titian there that I would sooner have 
myself than the original, for the colors are 
brighter and the size more sensible.” 

“ Your government has had the ‘Assump- 
tion ’ daubed over until it is hardly better than 
a chromo-lithograph, and you are verily wise 
as your generation is wise, my father,” said 
Dorat, angrily, as the rotund figure of the 
monk, clothed in brown and with a hoe on 
his shoulder, came between him and the sun- 
light. 

“ I cannot paint here/’ he said, impatiently 
to Veronica a little later, “ I cannot paint 
here with these chattering fools about us; 
you must come to my studio to-morrow.” 


SANTA BARBARA. 


3 7 


“ Where is that ? ” 

“ On the Fondamento of the Malcanton. 
You know the house where the fig-tree 
hangs over the wall/’ 

“But will it be well? Cattina said but 
yesterday to me : ‘ See, I am here, and the 

children and the holy men come and go, and 
so Tron will not mind much when he returns, 
but beware how you go to his house by your- 
self’ — she meant your house.” 

“ Do not heed Cattina or anyone, and 
what of Tron ? He cannot be here yet. He 
is gone to Greece, you say, and those heavy- 
laden brigs sail very slowly.” 

“ But he will come back, sail they ever so 
slowly, and- ” 

“ You are afraid of him? ” 

“ I do not know.” She did not know ; the 
poor are too ignorant to sift, to analyze, to 
classify, and to docket their emotions and 
sensations as cultured minds do theirs. 

“ Why did you marry him ? ” asked Dorat, 
with impatience and scorn. 

“ I do not know,” she said again. His 
questions disturbed her, as stones thrown in- 
to a well of still water trouble its clear sur- 
face. 

“ I will tell you,” said Dor&t ; “ you were 


38 


SANTA BARBARA . 


a girl, and girls are curious, and vain, and 
inquisitive, and the first man who comes is 
welcome — was it not so ? ” 

“ Perhaps,” she said, with a blush which 
came and went. “ Zuan is handsome,” she 
added with pride, “ so strong and tall ; you 
would want to paint him if you saw him.” 

“ Ah,” said Dorat with irritation, “ it was 
his good looks and his straight limbs which 
tempted you, then.” 

“ Perhaps,” she answered again, but she 
answered uneasily ; she was perplexed and 
troubled by this search into her motives and 
feelings. Zuan was handsome, but he was 
rude and violent ; he swore at her in his 
wrath as he swore at the ropes and the sails 
when the waves were running high and the 
brig laboring through a white squall along 
the coasts of Dalmatia or Albania. 

Dorat looked at her where she stood in the 
transparent light ; her head and arms uncov- 
ered, her swelling bosom confined by the 
white linen bodice she wore, her whole as- 
pect that of one of those strong and fertile 
women with whom the quays and bridges and 
calle of Venice had been full in the days 
when Giorgione and Veronese and Titian 
had found their saints and goddesses in the 


SANTA BARBARA. 


39 


maidens drying their golden locks seated in 
high air on their wooden altane , and sketched 
their Madonnas from the young matrons 
suckling their big-eyed babies in the noon- 
day heat under the vine-bower of a traghetto. 

“You must come to me in Malcanton,” he 
said, abruptly; “I cannot paint here, with 
these people about, and in this glare of 
light. What should you fear? No one need 
know. If they do, it would not matter. No 
one will see your picture here. It will go with 
me to Paris.” 

“What is Paris?” 

“The heaven of women and the smelting- 
house of genius. You do not understand? 
Of course you do not. That is what is so 
divine in you. You might be Eve or Lilith 
living in a virgin world.” 

He spoke dreamily, to himself rather than 
to her ; and drew out the drawer of his color- 
box in which the gold adder lay, and turned 
it over with his hand carelessly, as if seeking 
the colors which lay beside it. 

Veronica’s eyes fell on it ; and her heart 
heaved under the linen of her gown. 

“ Come to my house,” said Dorat, softly, 
“come to-morrow to Malcanton.” 

She hesitated a moment and glanced to- 


40 


SANTA BARBARA. 


ward the sacristan’s wife, who was washing 
carrots and peeling onions between two of 
the marble columns. 

“ I will come,” she said, in a low voice ; “ but 
do not let Cattina know.” 

“Cattina shall not know, any more than 
the adder that lies dead in the saxifrage.” 

Then he added a few touches, a little 
color, to the portrait he had made of her, so 
that the monk and the woman might see him 
at work ; and somewhat later let her go away 
from the garden by the narrow passages 
which turn and twist behind the church, pas- 
sages full of teeming families, curly-haired 
children, fluttering rags, scarlet runners cling- 
ing to strings, little vines which flourish 
seemingly without soil, and here and there in 
the dirt and confusion and squalor, a brass 
vessel of beautiful shape, a marble lintel of 
beautiful moulding, an iron scroll-work balco- 
ny fit for Desdemona, or an ogive window 
with some broken fresco-color on it, under 
which Stradella may have played a serenade 
in the moonlight. 

Dorat put the necklace once more in his 
pocket and went to his gondola. 

“A daughter of the gods, a sister of the 
saints,” he thought, “and yet won by a little 


SANTA BARBARA, 


4i 


gold beaten out and curled about by a jewel- 
ler’s cunning! They are all like that, all; the 
cabotine sleeps in every madonna of them 
all.” 

Veronica, meanwhile, who knew the multi- 
tudinous mazes of her city by heart, went on 
fast through the narrow ways and over the 
small bridges straight across the city, until 
behind the Grimani Palace she reached the 
church of Sta Maria Formoso. 

There she entered and crossed herself, and 
knelt for a few moments, then rose, and 
asked one of the vergers where the famous 
picture was. Being told, she went to the 
first side altar on the right of the entrance, 
and gazed at the Santa Barbara until her eyes 
were green blind. 

“ Like me ! Like me ! ” she thought. She 
knew nothing of pictures, less even than the 
monk who preferred the chromo-lithographs 
of the shops, but she could see that this saint 
was beautiful, and he had said that she, a 
poor common woman, a sailor’s wife, resem- 
bled her ! 

She sank down on her knees before the al- 
tar and tried to pray again, but could not ; 
her heart beat too tumultuously, her brain 
was in too great a confusion of pride and of 


42 


SANTA BARBARA . 


pleasure. She was like this great and heav- 
enly creature ! like thisr famous picture which 
strangers came from far and wide to see ! 

“ Had it been painted from the saint her- 
self? ” she asked of an old beggar, who was 
near when she rose from her knees. 

The old man chuckled a little, decorously, 
as beseemed a reverend place. “ Not it ; 
they do say it was painted from Violante, the 
painter’s daughter, who was a love of Ti- 
tian’s. Titian was in luck ; she must have 
been a rare one, and fine and strong, too.” 

Veronica went out of the .church with a 
dizzy sweetness dazing her mind and soul, and 
took her way homeward by the lovely bridge 
of Paradise and under the vista supeyba of 
great Colleoni. When she reached the Cam- 
piello dei Merli it was late ; her sister-in-law 
was scolding vigorously, the children were cry- 
ing, the neighbors were quarrelling, the fish 
was burning in the frying-pan, the washed linen 
was lying in a heap on the kitchen floor, un- 
ironed and unstarched. It all struck on her 
painfully, with a sudden perception wholly new 
to her, of its penury, its noise, its coarseness, 
its squalor, its misery. 

She had never felt them so before. For to 
that which is forever about us we are both 


SANTA BARBARA. 


43 


blind and deaf until some ray of light from 
another world than ours is shed upon our 
darkness. 

The calm green garden, the cool white 
cloisters, the sweet penetrating voice of Dorat, 
the homage and. the eloquence of his eyes, all 
seemed to her very far away, far as a dream 
of the night. 

“ Have you sold the gold snake and 
brought us the money ? ” asked her sister-in- 
law. 

“ I gave it back to the gentleman a week 
ago,” said Veronica, in a low, unsteady tone. 

“ More fool you,” said the other woman. 

The following day she did not go to the * 
palace in Malcanton. 

On the day after that, while it was still 
early in the forenoon, she was beating her 
linen in the canal water, leaning down from an 
old black boat of Zuan’s under the slender 
shade of an acacia-tree, when the strokes of a 
gondolier’s oars came near to her and she saw 
Dor&t. The gondola paused by her. 

“ Why are you unkind to me ? ” he mur- 
mured, with his hand on the side of her boat. 
She grew very red, and with her wet fingers 
hurriedly drew together the cotton folds of her 
bodice which had opened as she leaned over 


44 


SANTA BARBARA. 


the side to dip her linen in the water ; she 
felt that her hair was loose, her face and body 
were heated. 

“ Why are you so unkind to me ? ” he re- 
peated. “Without you I can do nothing with 
this portrait which might be so beautiful.” 

“ There are many other women, and I am 
busy, as you see.” 

“Leave those rags and come with me. 
There is no other woman in Venice who has 
the face of Santa Barbara and the form of 
Europa. Come.” 

“ With you ? Like this ? Oh, no, oh, 
no ! ” 

She spoke in infinite distress, her hands un- 
consciously wringing out the folds of one of 
Tron’s rough blue shirts. 

“ Well, come by yourself if you will, but 
soon — I mean while the morning light holds. 
Mia cara y what use is it to have saved my life 
from the little snake, if you poison it to me 
yourself? ” 

“You laugh at me when you say such 
follies,” said Veronica, with a flush on her 
face, half of anger, half of humiliation, yet with 
a pleasure in her soul which was stronger than 
either. 

“ No,” said Dorit, softly, “ I speak in all 


SANTA BARBARA . 


45 


seriousness. Your beauty haunts me. If you 
will not let me capture it at least in semblance 
on canvas, my days will be useless and your 
memory joyless to me. You know nothing of 
the world, but there are great cities in it 
where I can make men worship your effigy. 
You know nothing of books, but I think the 
public reader in Venice still reads aloud Ari- 
osto to the people sometimes, does he not ? 
Ariosto, one saint’s day, met a woman wear- 
ing a robe embroidered with golden branches 
of palm ; and that palm-bearer changed the 
ways of his life for him ; so you have changed 
mine.” 

The dulcet and poetic flattery, which was 
none the less sweet to her that she only most 
imperfectly comprehended it, sank into the 
very soul of Veronica as she listened, shrink- 
ing back from his gaze under the boughs of 
the mimosa acacia. At that moment the shrill 
voice of Tron’s sister called to her from the 
Campiello. 

“ Do not let her see you,” said Veronica, 
in terror. “ Go, go, pray go ; she is a cruel 
woman, and Zuan bade her watch me.” 

“ Come, then, where she cannot watch 
you ! ” 

“ I will come,” murmured Veronica, as she 


46 


SANTA BARBARA . 


heard the heavy step of her sister - in - law 
sounding nearer and nearer over the stones. 

“ Have you not done yet, ’Nica ? ” cried the 
woman; “a fine wife you make for a poor 
sailor. If Zuan hearken to me, he will bring 
you nought home but a rope’s end. A few 
shirts to dip, and you are all the morning at 
it ! Did my brother marry you to keep you 
like a duchess ? ” 

“ Come tome, and you shall have in recom- 
pense what you will,” said Dorat. Then he 
made a sign to his gondolier ; and the man 
backed with a single sweep of his oar be- 
tween some great black barges moored there, 
which screened him from the sight of the sis- 
ter of Zuan Tron as she came down, breath- 
less, blousy, dishevelled, and bursting with 
invectives, to the edge of the stones where 
the acacia grew. 

But Veronica did not go that day, nor the 
next to that. Her resistance increased his 
desire and his resolution a hundredfold. He 
followed her, he interrupted her, he besieged 
her ; what was it he asked? So little ! Only 
a few hours of morning light that he might 
make her beauty as famous to the world as it 
was dear to him. Whenever she went to 
pray in the churches near, which she did 


SANTA BARBARA. 


4 7 


often, for Venetians are pious and humble 
children of the Church, he was there in the 
mellow incense-scented shadows, and his 
presence filled her whole existence ; she 
could not sleep, or work, or eat for that one 
thought : she was a creature of simple mind, 
of clear conscience, of perfect honesty, but in 
her nature there was a capacity for strong 
passion, for romantic illusion, and to these he 
appealed irresistibly. 

Zuan Tron’s wooing had been brutality, 
not love ; had she known it, Dorat’s desires 
were no less brutal, and were no more love. 
But they were veiled in the soft, dreamy 
colors of art, of apparent deference, of sweet 
persuasive solicitation, and they seemed to 
her as the warm and soft south wind seemed 
after the bitter blasts of the north from the 
mountains. The contest 'was unequal, as 
unequal as the contest of the lutist and the 
nightingale in Ford’s great poem. The lut- 
ist had all the resources and endurance of 
art and of artifice ; the nightingale had only 
its own little beating heart and throbbing 
throat. 

The days passed and she did not yield ; 
and the cloister garden saw neither her nor 
Dor&t. 


48 


SANTA BARBARA. 


“ That great gentleman is always after 
you ; if you brought home money, at least it 
might be worth while/’ said the sister of 
Tron ; “ if you brought home money may be 
I would say nothing to Zuan when he comes 
back/’ 

“You are a vile woman,” said Veronica, 
with all her face in a glow of shame and 
rage ; ignorant of how much the gold coins 
of Dor&t had already to do with the relaxing 
of her sister-in-law’s vigilance. But she was 
restless, feverish, ill at ease ; she had strange 
dreams when she did sleep ; and it was in 
vain that she besought the guidance of Sta 
Barbara. 

Sta Barbara had been a princess and a 
warrior, her chastity decked in armor, and 
the splendors of wealth around her, with her 
cannon and her tower, emblems of her 
strength. What could she know of the temp- 
tations assailing a poor sailor’s wife ? 

“ You are cruel to me,” said Dorat, and re- 
peated it so often that the ignorance of her 
mind and the tenderness of her nature blended 
together in a sense of tormenting reproach ; 
she believed that he suffered; his pallor, his 
restlessness, his heavy eyes, his feverish 
movements seemed to her like the suffering 


SANTA BARBARA. 


49 


of the soul, and all that he told her she be- 
lieved. Indeed for the moment he was sim 
cere ; in their desires men lie like truth be- 
cause they do not know that they are lying ; 
what they wish for is to them, as to children T 
the universe for that one moment, and they 
are honest when they vow it is so. 

“ Will you come once more at least to the 
cloister ? if you will not to my house/' he 
asked; “what can you fear? Zuan Tron 
himself might see you in the garden, what 
could he say? We are hardly ever alone. 
It is a sacred place.” 

“ I will come once more, then, there,” said 
Veronica, reluctantly; and yet with all her 
whole being in a tumult of longing fear and 
joy. It could not be very wrong or perilous, 
she thought ; the children ran in and out, 
Cattina was the sacristan’s wife, always near, 
usually some monk paced through the aisles. 
There could be no risk of harm in going 
there, she thought. 

It was a brilliant morning when she reached 
San Francesco on the morrow. Rain had 
fallen in the night and washed all things fresh 
and fair. The herbs in the garden filled the 
air with pungent sweetness. Some lizards 
swayed themselves on the blossoms of the 


5o 


SANTA BARBARA. 


rose laurels. Some pigeons scratched among 
the thyme and basil. 

“ I thank you for this at least,” said Dorat, 
gravely and with deference ; the portrait of 
her, in its shadowy, unfinished suggestion, 
stood on an immense easel within one of the 
arcades. He placed her in the attitude of 
the Sta Barbara, and himself almost turning 
his back on her, and only looking at her fur- 
tively from time to time, painted on steadily 
without heeding the woman Cattina who came 
and looked on till she was tired, or the gar- 
dener monk who was digging in one of the 
borders, or the sacristan who said that the 
picture would be a better one if Veronica bor- 
rowed his wife’s best feast-day gown, a fine 
blue gown with red and yellow ribands at- 
tached to it. 

Dorat answered them no single word, and 
they talked till they were tired, and went away 
unnoticed and displeased. It was noon when 
he had worked two hours ; the drowsy heat 
lay like a weight upon the eyelids ; the green 
leaves lost their verdure and drooped ; the 
monks went into the monastery, the shutters 
were shut in the sacristan’s windows, and 
the church itself was closed ; entire silence 
reigned everywhere. 


SANTA BARBARA . 


51 


Dorat turned and laid down his palette and 
brushes and looked at her ; she colored over 
all her face and throat under that gaze which 
seemed like a very flame of fire stealing into 
all the recesses of her soul. She had stood 
still like a thing carved in marble for two 
whole hours ; a sense of oppression, of faint' 
ness, of dizziness came over her, strong though 
she was in her sea-fed vigor and youth. 

“ I am tired and thirsty/’ she murmured ; 
“ may I go ? ” 

Dor&t did not answer ; but he came toward 
her till he was so close that his lips brushed 
her hair, and with a touch soft and swift as 
the touch of the living adder had been, his 
hands stole round her throat, and clasped the 
golden adder, around it. Then, unresisting, 
she sank into his arms. 

“ Santa Barbara s’est donnee a moi,” 
thought Dorat a month later, “ et que puis-je 
en faire, mon Dieu ? ” 

The warmth of the summer passed; the 
rains came, and oftentimes the white fogs 
drifted in from the Adriatic and shrouded the 
sculptures of the Salute, and the golden 
domes of St. Mark’s as in a vapor of snow ; 


52 


SANTA BARBARA. 


the noons were still hot and the waters still 
were beautiful, with fruit boats and barges 
piled high with grapes coming in from all the 
isles, and filling the city with their regal pur- 
ple and gold. And in the studio on the canal 
of the Malcanton a great picture was finished 
in which his fullest genius and mastery of color 
had found expression ; the portrait of a wom- 
an with the head of Sta Barbara and the body 
of Europa. Painted with singular rapidity 
and strength, it had the vitality of a sudden 
passion in it ; it lived, it breathed, it spoke ; 
it was the incarnation of Woman. 

But he had given a high price for it. He 
had created a passion in another over which 
he had no control, one of those intense un- 
reasoning absolute passions which can only 
exist in natures which are all sense and emo- 
tion, and over which the mind has no domi- 
nance, and in which all reason is dumb. 

He had destroyed in her the calm of igno 
ranee, and the simplicity of unconscious chas- 
tity ; and there had arisen in their stead one 
of those violent, delirious, exhausting tem- 
pests of love, which is ecstasy to a lover for a 
little time, and then appalls, enthralls, wearies, 
and burdens him, and clings to him, fatal as 
the shirt of Nessus. 


SANTA BARBARA. 


53 


She was a beautiful woman, yes ; but when 
her beauty had been made wholly his, and 
studied, devoured, and known in every line, 
both by his art and by his senses, her mind 
could say nothing to his, and he asked him- 
self with a sigh what should he do with this 
adoration which he had called into being ? 

He had no love for her ; and the violence, 
the immensity, the absorption of the love she 
felt for him terrified him. He had desired a 
summer week’s caprice, a conquest for his 
art and for his senses, and she dreamed of 
an eternity of union. All the ardors dormant 
in her had awakened into life, and clung to 
him with a force which was commensurate 
with the physical strength and the splendid 
vitality in her. Sometimes he felt as if the 
adder she had killed had taken resurrection 
in her, and clasped him and curled round him 
and drew away his very life until he swooned. 

He had forgotten the sheer animalism of 
the untutored human creature, and the in- 
tense avarice and jealousy and greed of love 
in a woman whose intelligence is a blank. 
And he was himself unreasonable. He had 
had no rest until he had banished her modes- 
ty, her serenity, her peaceful ignorance of 
passion, and yet he was dissatisfied now be- 


$4 


SANTA BARBARA . 


cause she was no longer the same woman 
who had looked at him with those tranquil 
eyes of Palma Vecchio’s saint. 

The chill of the autumn was on the air, the 
mists of the autumn made the sails limp and 
wet, the lagoons drear and rough, the golden 
altars of the churches dim and dull ; and Ven- 
ice held him no more in her sovereign charm ; 
he grew restless for movement and change 
and the cities and companionship of men. 
“ All of her that I care to keep is here,” he 
thought as he looked at the picture, “ and 
what can I do with the living woman ? ” 

And he felt unkind, ungrateful, almost base ; 
yet the poet is right : 


How is it under our control 
To love or not to love ? 

If he took her away with him, he knew well 
what the issue would be : the old, old story ; 
the terrible idolatry on one side gnawing ever 
stronger on neglect and coldness, the indiffer- 
ence on the other which would become, under 
exaction and reproach, impatience, intoler- 
ance, and even at the last hatred, the cruellest 
hatred of all ; that which spurns what it once 
fondly sought. 


SANTA BARBARA. 


55 


He knew it so well, and he was sorry ; for 
in so far as he could feel it, being of the tern- 
perament he was, he had a compassion which 
was almost affection for this woman who had 
saved his life while he slept in the cloister 
garden, and who had seemed to him on his 
awakening half a goddess, half a saint, and 
whom he knew now to be but a poor daugh- 
ter and wife of rude men, a poor child of ig- 
norance and toil, with whom his mind and his 
thoughts had no affinity, however closely 
their hearts might beat together. And how 
to tell her this ? he who had made himself her 
earth and heaven ? whose own paradise in- 
deed she had even been for a few short sum- 
mer weeks in the sweet languor of the Vene- 
tian air ? 

She had saved his flesh from the sting of 
the adder, and he had placed in hers the dy- 
ing sting of a deathless desire. 

It was harsh, ungenerous, ungrateful, but 
he knew that he must leave her, that he would 
leave her, as soon as the first north winds of 
November should blow the sea-spray over 
the stairs of the Ducal Palace and wash the 
rosy feet of the pattering pigeons in its 
courts. 

The thought of Zuan Tron was unpleasant 


56 


SANTA BARBARA. 


to him, but not intolerable as it would have 
been earlier in the year. 

He did not feel for her that love which 
creates jealousy, either of the past or of the 
future. 

What he most feared of all was that she 
should quarrel with her husband, and lean 
wholly on himself. But how could he say 
that to her when she came to him up the mar- 
ble water steps of his house in the moonlight 
with such surety and ecstasy of love in her 
eyes ? 

u My poor Veronica, it would have been 
well for you if you had let the adder do its 
work on me that day,’’ he murmured once to 
her. But she would not understand. She 
smiled and sighed, that sigh which means that 
joy is beyond words. How could she tell 
that this adoration, this ardor, these embraces 
were not love — were merely the play of a 
grown child to whom no plaything could long 
suffice? Zuan Tron might kill her when he 
came home ; that she knew ; and sometimes 
the terror of his vengeance ran like ice 
through the leaping warmth of her veins. 
But she put that thought from her. She was 
not twenty years old and she was happy. 
To other eyes she was only Veronica Venier, 


SANTA BARBARA. 


57 


the wife of Tron ; but to herself, because to 
her lover, she was a goddess, a queen of 
heaven, even as the Barbara was in her im- 
mortality, even as the Europa was with her 
white breasts and shining hair. She had 
drunk deep of the philtre of vanity and pas- 
sion ; and when she trod the stones of court 
and calle she walked as one whose winged 
feet tread on air. Was she not more than 
mortal ? Had he not found her fair ? 

“ Thou art a fool, thou art a fool ! But I 
have made solid money out of thee, and 
though the gallant will go with the summer, 
these pieces will stay behind him,” thought 
her sister-in-law, counting over the bright 
gold and the crisp notes which she had had 
from Dorat, and which she had laid up with 
her feast-day clothes with sprigs of Easter- 
blessed olive to keep thieves away. Zuan 
would be none the wiser when he came home 
that thieves had been at his treasure ; sailors 
went and came and were long away, and 
must take their chance of what was done in 
their absence. 

“ He will be back at Ognissanti,” said 
Veronica once, and her eyes had a look of 
appeal and terror in them as they gazed into 
Dor&t’s. He looked away from them. 


58 


SANTA BARBARA . 


“ Ognissanti is not here yet,” he answered, 
“ and ships do not always reach the port for 
which they are bound.” 

“ She is a good brig, and they know every 
knot of her course as I know the turns of the 
calle,” she said with a shudder which passed 
over the fine smooth skin like a cold breeze 
that blows over the sun-warmed waters. 

“ We will show him your portrait when he 
comes,” said Dorat, and smiled. The Othel- 
los of life had no terrors for him ; this one 
would no doubt take gold as his sister had 
taken it. 

“ He is only a working sailor, is he ? ” he 
added. “ Well, we will buy him a brig of his 
own ; then he will be owner and skipper in 
one, and he will be always away on the seas, 
and you will be at peace.” 

“ No,” said Veronica, abruptly, “you shall 
not do that.” 

The coarseness of the cultured mind stung 
and wounded the instinctive honor of the un- 
taught nature. Then with passionate tender- 
ness and entreaty she threw her white arms, 
the arms of Europa, about his throat. 

“ Take me away before he comes,” she 
murmured, “ take me to your own country, 
your own city, anywhere, before he comes.” 


SANTA BARBARA. 59 

“ Are you so afraid of the brute ? ” he 
asked, evading her prayer. Veronica was 
silent, her face hidden on his breast. Then 
she said, slowly : “ I am afraid, yes ; for as 
the Madonna lives in heaven, so surely, if he 
try to touch me now , will I strike him dead, 
stone dead.” 

Dorat started and looked down on her, 
troubled as he was always troubled by the 
violence and intensity of her feeling for him. 
Then he smiled and caressed her. 

“ O my angel ! he is not worth that, nor 
am I. We are in the city of Desdemona and 
of Stradella indeed, but those great passions 
are not of our day nor of my world. Leave 
me to deal with your husband. He shall not 
trouble us.” 

He felt a coward and treacherous as he 
spoke. He knew that this was not the recom- 
pense she merited, not the devotion that he 
had promised ; he was conscious that in con- 
trast with the greatness and veracity of her 
love for him, this egotism must seem feeble, 
ungenerous, pitiful, coarse. But he could not 
force himself to say otherwise. He dreaded 
with the intensity of long selfishness the bur- 
den of her passion, the tumult of jealousy, of 
reproach, of violence which would come with 


6o 


SANTA BARBARA. 


the arrival of her husband if the truth were 
made manifest. 

He had no physical fear, for he was a brave 
man physically, but he dreaded unspeakably 
the ridicule of the world, the harassing emo- 
tions of untutored and uncontrolled tempera- 
ments, and he intended to go away where 
these could not trouble or pursue him. She 
would be wretched for awhile ; women were 
always so : but with a season that would 
pass away, and she would learn wisdom and 
resignation to the inevitable ; and he would 
come to her again sometime in spring or 
summer ; he had a certain affection for her, 
and she had been his Sta Barbara, his Eu- 
ropa. She would always merit some remem- 
brance. 

Veronica said nothing more that day, but 
on the sensuous beauty of her mouth and in 
the lustre of her eyes there came a look which 
left him uneasy ; the look that he would have 
given on canvas to a Clytemnestra or a 
Medea. 

O furious Moor ! have you left your som- 
bre spirit breathing on these waters ? ” he 
thought as he passed Othello’s house in 
going to the Zattere. It was a spirit not 
in unison with his own. Like all men who 


SANTA BARBARA. 6 1 

love pleasure he shunned and dreaded pas- 
sion. 

It was now late in October. 

The days were short but luminous still 
when the mists did not drift in from the la- 
goons of the Lido, or from the marshes of 
the low-lying lands beyond Mestre and 
Fucina. Boats still came in with rosy sun- 
rise reflection shed on their orange sails, and 
took their loads of autumn apples and pears 
and walnuts to the fruit market above Rialto. 
But soon, very soon, it would be winter, and 
the gondolas would glide by with closed 
felze, and the water would be a troubled 
waste between the city and the Lido, and 
men would hurry with muffled heads over the 
square of Saint Mark when the Alpine wind 
blew, and the strange big ships would creep 
on their piloted course tediously and timidly 
through the snowstorms to their anchorage 
in the wide Giudecca. 

And Dorat would be away. How to tell 
her that he was going ? How to plant that 
knife in her generous breast ? How to ban- 
ish from those adoring eyes that sleep which 
he had ceased to care to watch ? He was 
not heartless, and the knowledge of how 
cruelly he would hurt her hurt himself ; nor 


62 


SANTA BARBARA. 


could he wholly forget that in the clois- 
ter garden, this woman, whom he knew he 
would desert, had saved his life. 

The days passed, each a little shorter, a 
little colder than its predecessor ; and the 
sea-gulls and curlews, finding food rare on 
the northern waters, came in thousands near- 
er the city. 

One morning Veronica went from his pal- 
ace in the Malcanton to go as was her wont 
to mass, for it was a holy day and the bells 
were chiming from the spires and domes, and 
the colored banners were hanging above the 
church doors, and the sound of sonorous 
symphonies and chanting choristers echoed 
over the canals. 

Dorat lay still on his bed and gazed at her 
portrait. It was a great picture ; a picture 
which would make all men envy him. Where 
it stood in the distance in the studio on to 
which his chamber opened, the brilliancy of 
the morning light illumined it ; it looked as 
she had looked when he had seen her first in 
the cloister garden. Barely ten weeks had 
gone by since then, but she no longer looked 
to him like that. Yet she had true beauty in 
her face and form, and she loved him — great 
heavens ! how she loved him ! 


SANTA BARBARA. 


63 


“ Voila le mal,” he thought sadly, with the 
cruel wisdom of one who has been too often 
and too much loved, the sorrowful satiety of 
experience. 

All was silent around him. There is but 
little traffic that passes by Malcanton. The 
tolling of all the distant bells had not ceased ; 
high mass was being said in all the churches. 
He stretched his limbs out as he had done 
on the marble ledge of the cloister colonnade ; 
he slept again, profoundly. 

An hour had gone by when he was awak- 
ened by the voice of Veronica. In terrible 
agitation she cried aloud to him as she hung 
over his pillow. 

“ Wake, oh wake ! His brig has been 
sighted off the Tre Porte, a sailor has told 
me so this morning. By evening he will be 
here in the city; do you understand? They 
have seen his brig coming in by the Tre 
Porte ! ” 

Dorat, astonished, and scarcely awake, 
gazed at her where she knelt beside his couch, 
flung down beside it in a vehemence of emo- 
tion which shook her from head to foot. 

“ Do you mean your husband’s ship ?” he 
asked her, still drowsy and bewildered. 

“ Whose else? Take me away, take me 


64 


SANTA BARBARA. 


away ! He shall not touch me, he shall not 
look on me ! Do you hear me ? He will be 
in port by evening ! ” 

“ Yes, I hear you.” 

Dorat raised himself on one arm and looked 
upon her with pain and trouble. He under- 
stood her ; but how could he bring her to 
comprehend him ? 

“ Why do you have such fear of this man ? 
It is needless,” he said, persuasively. He need 
never know, he will never know, if you have 
common prudence ; and I will be always his 
best friend and yours, my dear child. Tron 
may be a brute, but brutes are tamable ; the 
human brute is always tame when he smells 
gold, and you know that I am rich. I will 
spare nothing to make your life easier and 
happier. All things can be managed by 
money.” 

He paused, startled by the expression in 
her eyes. Her hands were clenched on the 
satin coverlet of the bed. 

“ You must take me away,” she muttered. 
“You must take me away, far away, very far 
before the brig comes in at Ave Maria.” 

“ I cannot do that.” 

“ Cannot — why ? ” 

He was silent f embarrassed, and not know- 


SANTA BARBARA. 65 

ing how to reason with the unreason of pas- 
sion. 

“ Why cannot you? You love me,” she 
said, with a vibration of ferocity and suspicion 
in her tone. 

“ I love you, certainly,” he answered, with 
a passing sigh for the falsehood which would 
have been, in some sense, a truth only a few 
weeks earlier. “ But I cannot take you where 
I go. You would be wretched, and I too. I 
should have told you this before, but I thought 
you understood that — that — in a word, it is 
impossible. I will come and see you here 
every summer. We will be as happy as we 
have been. But you must be reasonable, 
dear. Tron will never know. You must 
meet him as you have met him before. Do 
you not understand ? It will be painful to 
you, but women can always act if they choose. 
We will show him this picture and you will 
tell him you have sat for it, and then he will 
not wonder that we are friends, and I will buy 
him the best vessel that is building in the 
yards. Veronica, do not look like that; we 
will be together every year as we have been 
now. Only be prudent. I abhor tragedy, 
and all scenes that are painful.” 

She rose slowly from her knees, and stood 


66 


SANTA BARBARA. 


erect beside the bed and gazed down on him ; 
it seemed to him as if her eyes blazed fire, 
and the fire entered into his very soul and 
searched out and searched up all its littleness 
and poverty. 

“ You would have me live with him, while 
I love you ? ” she said, slowly, while her white 
teeth closed on the red fulness of her lower 
iip. 

A faint flush of shame passed over his 
face : the tone of the words cut him like a 
scourge. 

“ I shall not be here,” he murmured, “ and 
you must be prudent till we meet again ; you 
Eire a noble creature, and very dear to me, but 
you do not understand.” 

“ I understand.” 

An immense scorn flashed over all the 
beauty of her face, and quivered in her trem- 
ulous nostrils, her breathless mouth, her ag- 
onized eyes. Without a word she left him. 
At last she understood but too well ; all the 
coldness, and tyranny, and cruelty which lie 
in mere desire were laid bare to her. Her 
hands clutched the golden adder which was 
always, sleeping and waking, round her throat, 
but she could not unclasp it. 

“ He never loved me, he never loved me ! ” 


SANTA BARBARA. 


67 


she muttered, as she went through the lofty 
rooms, down the staircase, and out onto the 
marble water-steps. 

The full light of day smote her on her eyes 
as with a blow. He had never loved her, but 
she had been his ; no other should touch what 
he had embraced. There was no escape for 
her possible but in death ; by death alone 
could she keep inviolate what had been given 
to him. 

Her husband would be in the city at night- 
fall. She would have killed him if her lover 
had cared, but he did not care, and her own 
life was hateful to her. 

The palace in Malcanton was quite silent 
and empty ; there was not even a bird in the 
leafless branches of the fig-tree to behold her. 

“ He never loved me ! ” she said once more 
between her shut teeth ; “ but I am his — I am 
as dross in his eyes to be passed on to an- 
other — but I am his ; Zuan shall never touch 
>> 

me. 

So, knowing well what she did, she de- 
scended to the lowest of the water-steps, and 
thence stepped calmly from the lowest stair 
into the cold, yellow, sluggish water itself, and 
threw herself forward, face downward, upon 
its slimy breast. 


68 


SANTA BARBARA. 


It was but a few feet deep, but deep enough 
to drown. 

The mud soon choked her ; the thick glid- 
ing current soon stole over her and sucked 
beneath it her shining hair, her white bosom, 
her beautiful limbs. 

And when the brig came into port that 
evening, she was lying dead on Dorat’s bed, 
with the green weeds of the canal caught in 
her clenched hands, and the little golden ad- 
der clasped about her throat. 












X. 







4 


POUSSETTE 


# 





\ 

































I 






( 


POUSSETTE. 


Poussette was a little lady. She was 
seven years old. She had various races 
blended in her, but the result of the union, 
if incorrect, was charming. She was small, 
and very gay and agile. She was covered 
completely with fine silky waving hair of the 
palest buff color ; and she had big hazel 
eyes set in her little face with sunbeams 
always dancing in them. Poussette was a 
dog, and not even a thoroughbred dog ; but 
she was aristocratic in her appearance and 
her tastes, and was as pretty a creature as 
ever carried a heart of gold on four little 
canine legs; flying hither and thither in ani- 
mated rapture, with the happy conviction that 
the world is full of joys and kindness with 
which all dogs are born, and which they cher- 
ish until the hand of man has beaten it out of 
them. 

Poussette had never been beaten or even 
menaced, so that the world was really to her 


72 


POUSSETTE. 


a very delightful and merry play-place. From 
her earliest recollection she had belonged to 
the same human being ; and this person, 
whatever he might be to others, was good to 
her, even though he had called her by such a 
naughty slang name as Poussette. His heart 
was tender for Poussette, though it was hard 
to everything else, as the heart of the gam- 
bler becomes through the withering dryness of 
an ignoble passion which is like a desert wind. 

When he was in his darkest moods and 
bitterest hours his temper was sullen, and 
all his acquaintances feared him, for at such 
times he was quarrelsome, and he was known 
to be an expert shot and fencer. But Pous- 
sette never heard a rough word from him. 
Underneath all the harshness and foulness 
which had overgrown his original nature, 
there remained in him some tenderness and 
some pity, and such as these were they were 
given to Poussette. “ Plus je connais 
I'homme, plus j'amie le chienP has been said 
and felt by many worthier and greater per- 
sons than he, 

The master of Poussette, like many an- 
other man, had been meant by nature for 
better things than those to which he had 
chosen to descend. He was of old family, 


POUSSETTE. 


73 


was good-looking, talented, and gifted with 
that power of charming others which is as 
precious as a magic wand ; he had been once 
of fair fortune and high ambition, and the 
accursed fascination of play had killed the 
ambition, scattered the fortune, and undone 
all the good deeds of nature. He was now, 
at thirty-eight years of age, a gambler, and 
nothing else. He had lost his estates, his 
position, his opportunities, his reputation, and 
his own self-respect : and the friends of his 
youth, when they saw him on the boulevards 
of Paris, or even of Nice, crossed over to the 
other side. 

“We are gens tares , Poussette,” he said to 
his companion ; and Poussette cocked her 
pretty ears as joyfully as if to be tare were to 
be robed and crowned. 

He told himself that he did not care when 
those who had been his contemporaries at 
the College of Louis le Grand no longer 
liked to be seen even to speak to him in the 
streets, but in his inmost soul the slight hurt 
him ; for he knew that it was his own fault 
that he was not as they were : deputies, di- 
plomatists, landowners, colonels of cavalry, 
heads of great families, men of honor and of 
worth, men of use in their generation. When 


7 4 


POUSSETTE . 


a boy of sixteen he had fought the Prussians 
with fury and admirable courage as a franc- 
tireur in his own forest of Vallarec ; the 
forests were his no more. He sometimes 
wished that a Prussian bullet had killed him 
then, under the shadow of his own great 
oaks, in his stainless and valiant boyhood. 
For he had wit and dignity enough left in 
him still to make him despise that which he 
had become, and to make him most esteem 
those who most despised him also. 

Poussette disliked the pavement of Paris 
or of any city ; she had been born on the 
Corniche in one of the fishermen’s cabins, 
and knew her way all about the coast, and 
everyone knew her, from the croupiers of 
Monte Carlo to the boat-builders of St. Jean. 
For several years of late she and her master 
had rarely left the vicinity of the Casino. 
More than half his life was spent at the ta- 
bles, and Poussette waited patiently for him 
under the palms in the gardens. Children with 
cakes, women by their caresses, vainly en- 
deavored to beguile and attract her. Pous- 
sette was never to be seduced from her post. 
Often she was hungry, thirsty, sleepy, tired, 
but she never stirred until she saw her friend 
come down the marble stairs. 


POUSSETTE. 


75 


Sometimes when fits of shame and black 
despair were on him, and he had scarcely a 
franc in his pocket, he tore himself wholly 
away from the place, and went and lived for 
awhile in some fishing village, miserably and 
morosely ; but tq Poussette these weeks were 
ecstasy ; her friend was all her own in them, 
and she trotted through the rock pools, and 
scratched in the sand, and basked in the sun, 
and slept on the rough pallet of a hut as hap- 
pily as she had done under the satin and 
gilding of the beds at the costly hotels. 
Sometimes these periods of retreat would 
last weeks, months, sometimes a whole sea- 
son, but whether they were short or long, 
whenever any money came to him from the 
remnants of land which he still possessed, or 
from some clever article which he had sent to 
the Parisian press, Vallarec at once returned 
to the gaming-tables. Sometimes he strove 
against his passion, hating both it and him- 
self, but in the end it was always stronger 
than he, and the long waiting of Poussette 
under the palms of the Casino would begin 
again. 

Her vigils did not make her unhappy, be- 
cause she was a sunny-tempered, patient, 
contented little soul ; but when she saw the 


76 


POUSSETTE. 


features she loved contracted and overcloud- 
ed by desperation and humiliation then her 
loyal heart was vexed, and her mind was 
troubled ; she could not tell what ailed him, 
but she knew that something did. At other 
times when hazard favored him, which was 
rarely, he abandoned himself to those pleas- 
ures and consolations which neither pleased 
nor consoled him ; and then Poussette did 
not understand at all ; something was wrong, 
but what, she could not tell ; yet when the 
noon sun looked in upon his troubled, heavy, 
feverish morning sleep it always lighted up 
the little form of Poussette sitting up, mute 
but eager, waiting his awakening. 

u If there were only a woman like you, 
Poussette, who would always bear with one, 
and never ask questions ! ” said Vallarec to 
her more than once. And his conscience 
smote him when he did so, for he had met 
such an one once, and he had used her ill. 
Poussette did not know what he said, but she 
knew that he meant something in her own 
praise, and jumped on his knee, and rubbed 
her soft ear against his. 

One day he became involved in a quarrel. 
It had its origin in a trifle, but became em- 
bittered into seriousness and ended in his 


POUSSETTE. 


77 


sending his tdmoins to meet those of his ad- 
versary, who was one of the best fencers in 
Europe. The meeting was fixed to take 
place outside a Belgian town. “ It conies 
a propos ,” he said to himself, for things had 
so gone with him that he had only a few hun- 
dred francs left in the world, just enough to 
take him to the place of meeting, and pay for 
his funeral afterward if he were killed. He 
believed that he should be killed. He was 
superstitious, like all men whose life is haz- 
ard. He wished to be killed. He was tired 
of the game. He was impatient of the re- 
morse and regret which at times assailed him. 
For change it was too late. The gold of his 
youth had been scattered like dropped sand 
behind him. It was not in his power or that 
of any other man to gather it up and make it 
into coin. He wished to die ; he believed 
that he should die ; he was an admirable 
fencer, but his opponent was one of the two 
or three men in the world who could give 
him points. So much the better, he said to 
himself; there was only one creature who 
would regret him, Poussette. 

The thought of her possible fate troubled 
him, haunted him, she was so small to be left 
all alone in the world ; they would cart her 


78 


POUSSETTE. 


off to a fourrilre , or consign her to a torture 
table. He had a servant, indeed, a clever 
rascal, who had been true to him hitherto be- 
cause Vallarec up to this time had been a 
master, both amusing and indulgent, if often 
sorely pressed for money. But he knew his 
Leporello to the core, and knew that, he 
once dead, the rogue would sell Poussette for 
half a bottle of cognac and a packet of cigars. 

“ What can I do with you, Poussette ? ” 
he said to her, as she sat on her little hind 
legs before the marble balustrade facing the 
sea. In twenty-four hours’ time he believed 
that he would be lying stiff and stark in a 
clay-field in the neighborhood of Lille. 
What would then become of Poussette ? 
Who would give her the cream off the coffee- 
tray, the truffles off the cutlets, the little white 
roll out of the napkin ? Who would care a 
straw whether she lived or died ? 

He thought of every friend and acquaint- 
ance he possessed, and could remember no 
one of whom he could ask so much as to take 
care of a little spoilt nondescript dog. The 
men would not be bored by such a bequest. 
The women would promise — oh, yes, they 
would promise anything ; but that would be 
all. He had no illusions. He knew that a 


POUSSETTE. 79 

beggared man has no friends, and a dead 
man has no mistresses. 

Then suddenly to his memory there re- 
curred the recollection of the one woman 
whom he had treated worst of them all. 

Marie Desjardins had been one of the most 
promising pupils of the Conservatoire, and 
had already commenced with success her 
public career, when for her misfortune she 
had met himself. To please him she had 
abandoned her art and sacrificed her future. 
He had requited her ill. She had been the 
one woman who had loved him as Poussette 
loved him. It is the ideal love ; but it is not 
the one for which men are often grateful. Its 
devotion makes them too sure, and perfect 
security begets satiety. Ten years had 
passed now since he had left her abruptly 
and brutally for a woman who was not worth 
the dust which her foot touched on a sum- 
mer day. He knew what had become of her. 
She was living at a little house which she had 
inherited in the small town of Bourg (La 
Bresse), and gave the lessons in singing and 
recitation: she, who, if he had never crossed 
her path, might have been one of the idols of 
the world. He told himself that it was not 
his fault in any way, that she might have re- 


8o 


POUSSETTE. 


turned to her career had she chosen ; she had 
been only twenty then ; but he knew that he 
lied to himself when he said so. When he 
had left her he had killed the artist in her, as 
the bird’s song ceases if the bird’s wing is 
crippled. 

'‘Very likely she had only a small talent,” 
he said to himself to stifle his remorse. But 
he knew that the reasoning was ungenerous 
and that it was untrue, because her talent 
had been great, great enough to move the 
admiration of the most fastidious of critics, 
and the most severe of audiences in the brief 
season during which she had been heard at 
the Grand Opera. So many years had gone 
by since then, years filled for him by the 
egotism of a base and destructive passion. 
He had forgotten her long and cruelly. But 
at this moment her memory returned to him. 
She had always been gentle and kind to all 
creatures ; she would, he felt sure, be good 
to Poussette. There was time to turn aside 
and go to Bourg on his way to Belgium, and 
he went, taking Poussette with him. 

It was late in the afternoon when he 
reached that quiet town covered up under its 
abundant foliage which was now in the first 
freshness of earliest summer. He found that 


POUSSETTE. 


81 


she lived in an outskirt of the Faubourg- St. 
Nicholas, and walked thither. The baseness 
of what he was about to do did not occur to 
him. To seek a woman out after so many 
years only to ask a favor of her was an act 
which in another man would have struck him 
as odious and mean. But his sense of shame 
was lost in his desire to save Poussette, and 
moreover the life which he had led had dulled 
his sensibilities and destroyed the finer in- 
stincts of human nature in him. He had be- 
come indifferent as to whether what he did 
were right or wrong, were just or unjust, so 
long as it fulfilled his immediate purpose. 

The little house in which Marie Desjardins 
dwelt was at the end of a grassy lane, deeply 
shaded by limes and sycamores. It was 
hardly more than a cottage, but it stood in a 
large and shady garden of which the odors 
of the lilies and the mignonette were blown 
on the west wind to him as he approached it. 
“ You will be well there, Poussette,” he said 
to the little dog, who was running gayly 
along the grass, not knowing the fate which 
awaited her. The garden was enclosed by a 
high hedge of privet ; there was a small 
wooden gate in one part of the hedge ; he 
unlatched the gate and entered, Poussette 


82 


POUSSETTE. 


trotting before him, curious as to this new 
scene, and delighted with the garden, which 
was a labyrinth of blossoms and of boughs. 
Rain had fallen in the earlier day, and the 
sunshine sparkled on the moisture of every 
blade and leaf. The path from the gate 
turned suddenly and brought him in sight of 
the house itself, old and low with latticed win- 
dows and deep eaves where swallows nested, 
and a thatched porch buried under tea-roses 
and honeysuckle. It was so calm, so fresh, 
so innocent, a poem of Verlaine's came to his 
mind : 

Le ciel est par-dessus le toit 
Si bleu, si calme ! 

Un arbre par-dessus le toit 
Balance sa palme. 

La cloche dans le ciel qu’on voit 
Doucement tinte ; 

Un oiseau sur l’arbre qu’on voit 
Chante sa plainte. 

Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est 1&, 

Simple et tranquille ; 

Cette paisible rumeur-R 
Vient de la ville. 

Qu’as-tu fait, 6 toi que voiR 
Pleurant sans cesse ? 

Dis, qu-as tu fait, toi que voila 
De ta jeunesse ? 


POUSSETTE. 


83 


Verlaine’s life had been drowned in the 
same swirling waters of vice and folly as his 
own. 

Out of the fragrant darkness of the path a 
woman came toward him : tall, grave, fair, 
clad in black. He knew that it must be 
Marie Desjardins, and for the first time a 
sense of his own monstrous selfishness and 
insolence in seeking her out thus came upon 
him. Dazzled by the sunshine she looked at 
him at the first indifferently, seeing in him 
only a stranger ; then, as he drew nearer she 
recognized him, the blood rushed to her face 
and ebbed away, leaving her deadly pale ; 
she stood still in the grassy path. 

‘‘ You ! ” she said, faintly. 

Then he felt ashamed. He said nothing ; 
only remained where he was, instinctively un- 
covering his head. Poussette paused also, 
with one paw uplifted ; puzzled, inquisitive, 
dubious. 

There was silence between those who long 
before had been lovers : a prolonged silence 
in which the burr of the bees in the chalices 
of the lilies and the chattering of the swallows 
under the eaves were audible. 

They looked at each other, mutually moved 
by a strong emotion ; noting how time had 


34 


EOUSSETTE. 


changed them both, him the more by far, for 
the woman’s calm and simple life, passed in 
pure air and healthful pursuits, had kept her 
younger than her years. He was the first to 
speak. He moved toward her with embar- 
rassment, as though he were a boy instead of 
a worn-out man of the world. 

“ I have done wrong to come here,” he 
said, in a low voice. “ I beg your pardon. 
Are you — are you — well and happy ? ” 

“ You did not come here to ask me that, I 
imagine,” she said, coldly: the tone had scorn 
in it, but her voice trembled ; his appearance 
there shook her life as a tree is shaken in a 
hurricane. 

“ No. I came to ask you a favor,” he an 
swered, humbly. The enormity of his intru- 
sion there seemed to him as he spoke so inex- 
cusable, so odious, that he loathed himself. 
She did not answer, she did not endeavor to 
aid his explanation ; she stood under the 
drooping tea-rose boughs of her doorway, 
mute, cold, still ; as still as though she had 
been made of marble. 

He looked at her, hoping for some word 
from her which might make it easier for him 
to continue, but she did not speak. His pres- 
ence there seemed to him monstrous, inso- 


POUSSETTE. 


85 


lent, grotesque, unpardonable. He hastened 
to complete his errand and leave her in such 
peace as she possessed. 

“ Marie,” he said, humbly, and his voice 
faltered over her, “this little dog has been 
my only friend for seven years. I am going 
on a long journey, I shall never return ; I 
know no one who will be good to her; I 
thought of you ; you were always good.” 

He paused, made dumb by an unusual 
emotion which he could ill control. Pous- 
sette looked up in his face as though she 
understood ; she was troubled, her tail 
drooped. Marie Desjardins did not speak. 
Was she offended, he wondered, or touched, 
or outraged, or disappointed ? Her counte- 
nance and her attitude told him nothing. 

“ Will you do it ? ” he asked at length. 
“ If not — -I must kill her.” 

“ Where do you go ? ” 

“ That I cannot tell you.” 

“ It is impossible for her to go with you ? ” 
“ Yes. I do not wish her to suffer.” 

She was silent again, looking at the little 
figure of Poussette, who, anxious, wistful, 
and afraid, stood gazing upward in her mas- 
ter’s face. Then she said, at last : “ If you 
be in any extremity and have no other way 


86 


POUSSETTE. 


— yes — leave her here ; I will take care of 
her/’ 

Tears rushed into the weary eyes of the 
man before her ; he loathed himself in that 
moment with a deadliest scorn. 

“ I thank you,” he said, simply. 

He lifted up the little dog and pressed her 
closely to his breast, and kissed her on her 
forehead. Then he set her gently down upon 
the garden path, and dropped one of his 
gloves upon the ground, and motioned to her 
to guard it. 

Poussette lay down beside the glove and 
folded her little soft forefeet upon it. She 
was used to the order ; and only her large 
hazel eyes, dewy and dilated, expressed her 
wonder and alarm at being bidden to stay 
thus in an unfamiliar place. 

He bowed low before the woman whom he 
had wronged, and without any other farewell, 
with one backward look at her and the little 
dog, he turned and went out of the garden. 
Poussette lay still, obedient and faithful, her 
paws folded on the glove, a great terror and 
a great anguish gazing helplessly out of her 
pathetic eyes. 

Marie Desjardins, as she heard the click of 
the gate in the hedge behind him as he 


POUSSETTE. 


87 


passed out into the road, sank down on the 
bench beside the porch and wept bitterly. 
She had long thought her heart dead, and 
the peace of the grave her portion ; but now, 
lo ! it lived again, and its life was only hope- 
less, writhing, poisoned pain. How cruel — 
with what refined and insolent cruelty ! — to 
seek her out after these many years in her 
humble seclusion, and once more banish for- 
ever the resignation which she had attained, 
the poor pale simulacrum of content which 
she had striven to believe was happiness ! 

He, meanwhile, went on through the blos- 
soming brightness of the little tranquil town 
and reached the railway station as the train 
for the north was about to move ; in another 
moment it bore him away from the green and 
pleasant places which had touched him for a 
moment into passionate regret. 

The following day the duel was fought. 
Contrary to his presentiment and to all prob- 
ability, he wounded his adversary severely 
and was not himself touched. 

“ All luck has left me,” he said, bitterly. He 
had wished to lose his life ; it was of no use to 
him ; he had thrown away all which had made 
it worth anything ; an intolerable sense of 
fatigue was on him ; even the passion which 


88 


POUSSETTE. 


had been his ruin had ceased to move him 
much. Yet he returned to it instinctively, 
through habit rather than will. 

The thought of Marie Desjardins was often 
present to him as he had left her in the green 
and quiet garden. He felt glad that Pous- 
sette was there, safe with a woman, among 
flowers and leaves. She would never be 
hungry, or tired, or ill-treated ; she would live 
out her little life in comfort. But, unknown to 
himself, Poussette had been the tie which had 
still united him to the simple and healthy 
things of existence. Again and again he had 
done for Poussette what he would never have 
done for himself, ashamed of his softer feeling, 
but yielding to it for her sake ; that better in- 
fluence was now no more upon him, and un- 
opposed the viler instincts in him had all their 
way unchecked. He missed Poussette as he 
had never dreamed that he could miss the pres- 
ence of anything. The remembrance of the 
little dog patiently waiting for him in her faith- 
ful affection had often made him tear himself 
from the gaming tables for her sake, had often 
drawn him out for her sake to country places 
in the hills and down to the more solitary sea- 
shores. Poussette had been the one innocent 
thing in his existence which had had power to 


POUSSETTE. 


89 


arouse in him still some unselfishness, and 
some emotion besides that of the feverish lusts 
of play. He was sincerely glad that she was 
where she was, ih peace and safety, but he 
missed her. 

He remained at the tables day and night, 
leaving them only for brief intervals when he 
was absolutely forced. He had only five gold 
pieces when he returned to Monte Carlo from 
Belgium ; nothing else in the whole world ; 
all that he had possessed was gone to the 
devil of hazard ; he had lost everything, even 
the miniature of his mother ; and he had no 
longer any power to compose anything for the 
press which would fetch money. There was 
an anaemia of the brain upon him ; he could 
not sustain any line of thought long enough 
to write a page. 

With his five napoleons which he had staked 
at roulette on the evening after the duel, he 
had won fifty ; with the fifty he had continued 
to play, leaving the roulette for rouge et noir. 
At first he won continually, then he lost 
largely, then he won and lost in those madden- 
ing alternations in the coquetry of which lies 
the horrible sorcery of gambling. Play, like 
Madame de Maintenon, loves to keep her 
wooer “jamais content , jamais ddsesperdj 


90 


POUSSETTE. 


until he yields, the king his crown, the gam- 
bler his life. 

He won large sums, and then played them 
back whence they came. Three weeks passed 
away thus like one long nightmare. He saw 
everything through a red mist, splashed with 
black specks. People looked at him in appre- 
hension. He had been well known there so 
many years, but he had never had this look 
upon his face before. He had eaten scarcely 
anything all this time, and slept but very little ; 
his sleep, such as it was, being only a repeti- 
tion of delirious dreams of series and of syn- 
dicates which should break the bank. There 
was no Poussette to awaken him, with her 
little soft head against his lips, and her low 
smothered bark of appeal which said plainly, 
“ the sun has risen ; so long, oh, so long ago ! ” 

He played on and on and on through 
twenty days and nights, hypnotized by the 
vacillations of chance, getting on his features 
a look of almost brutalized imbecility. He had 
a vague dominant desire which came now and 
again over him ; he thought, “ If I could win 
a hundred thousand francs I would go back to 
Marie Desjardins.” He had seen at a glance 
that she forgave him, that she loved him ; he 
longed for the rest and comfort of her pres- 


POUSSETTE. 


91 


ence. As a beggared man he could not go 
to her ; she was poor as the world counts 
money, but she was rich compared to a 
cleared-out gambler, to a ratd who had not 
anything which he could call his own except 
the clothes he wore. 

That thought, and the memory of the 
green, peaceful garden in which he had left 
Poussette, swept over him now and then like 
the gust of a fresh west wind. Then they 
passed away, and he was left to his semi-de- 
lirium, playing mechanically and seeing ev- 
erything red splashed with black aces. The 
authorities of the bank watched him with 
uneasiness. He had the look of a man who 
would bring a scandal upon it. 

It was not so long since the Marquis de Val- 
larec had been one of the most noted and ad- 
mired figures at Monte Carlo, but now they 
knew that he was ruined out and out, and 
they watched him as they would have done^a 
beggar, could a beggar have passed through 
their gilded portals. There was a rumor cur- 
rent that he had sold his dog for the five na- 
poleons which he had brought there last, and 
on which he had won at roulette. The story 
gained credence, for Poussette was no more 
seen 


92 


POUSSETTE . 


On the evening of the twenty-second day 
he lost his last coin. 

He looked round him with the desperate- 
hunted gaze of a wolf at bay ; understood 
that he could stay there no more, and left his 
place ; the people who had been nearest him 
eagerly closed up around the table, and the 
momentary vacuum was filled up without a 
second’s delay. The game went on uninter- 
ruptedly ; the players gave no thought to 
him. Only one of those observers who 
watched all which went on, on behalf of the 
bank, noting the look upon his face whis- 
pered a few words to another person, and 
that person followed him at a distance, keep- 
ing him within sight. 

Unconscious of the espionage Vallarec 
went out through the glittering halls so fa- 
miliar to him, through the gay group of fash- 
ionable visitors, through the chatter and the 
perfumes and the artificial light, and descend- 
ed the stairs into the grounds ; the orchestra 
in the concert-room was playing the march 
from the “ Mage ” of Massenet, and the music 
echoed dizzily through his brain ; he felt 
drunk, worse than drunk, imbecile. 

He had not a farthing in the world, and 
nothing left on which to raise a franc except 


POUSSETTE . 


93 


the little revolver, ivory-mounted, which he al- 
ways carried in the breast pocket of his coat. 

He walked on stupidly to the marble bench 
set beneath a group of aloes, and sheltered 
by mimosas, where little Poussette had so 
often waited and watched for him. The gar- 
dens were wholly deserted ; he sat down and 
leaned his elbows on his knees, and his head 
upon his hands. It was a brilliant, starry 
night, the sea was throbbing under the moon- 
light, the earth was at her loveliest. He had 
no eyes for her beauty, he was only devoured 
by his own misery. 

As he sat thus the emissary who had been 
bidden to follow him approached and stood 
near, and with a certain timidity murmured 
an offer of aid, of money, of any facility de- 
sired, if he would leave the principality before 
morning. 

Vallarec started as if he had been stabbed 
by a knife, and rose to his feet. 

“For what do you take me?” he said, 
haughtily, staring at the messenger in amaze- 
ment ; the words spoken in his ear had been 
like a douche of iced water on a brain in stu- 
por. 

The other man thought doubtless, “ I take 
you for what you are, a desperate and 


94 


POUSSETTE. 


cleaned out gamester/’ but he was awed by 
the tone and the glance of the fallen gentle- 
man, and muttered a vague apology. He 
did not dare to insist upon the errand con- 
fided to him, and slunk away into the 
shadows of the shrubs and trees. 

Vallarec laughed low and drearily to him- 
self. 

“ They are afraid I shall kill myself on 
their territory and get them into evil odor. 
They would pay for my transit to Paris, and 
perhaps give me a week’s board wages as 
well — how kind ! Gentils seigneurs , I will 
leave you a parting gift, the gift of my body, 
and if it frighten all your clients away out 
of hell, so much the better. My death will 
have been of more use than my life.” 

Then, fearing that he was watched by the 
detectives from the Casino, and might be in- 
terfered with, he walked slowly away from 
the bench and along the gardens. 

He thought of Poussette as he left the mar- 
ble seat where she had so often watched for 
him, and he felt glad that he had placed her 
in safety. 

His mind was clearer ; the insult of the 
offered assistance from the bank had given 
him a shock which had cleared away the semi- 


POUSSETTE. 


95 


insanity of his fury and despair ; he was ex- 
hausted both from sleeplessness and want of 
food, but he was sane once more. He knew 
that he had left in the gaming-hell behind him 
his honor, his intelligence, his past, and his 
future. What was there left to live for ? 
Nothing. 

Not even Poussette ! he thought, with a 
weary smile. 

Poussette was doubtless at that hour sleep- 
ing in the little cottage under the sycamores 
and limes of Bourg ; perhaps sleeping on the 
breast of the woman whom he had forsaken, 
but who had never forgotten him. 

“ On passe au cdte du bonheur sans le sa- 
voirP he thought, recalling the words of an 
author whose name he could not have remem- 
bered. How true it was ! he sighed heavily, 
thinking of Marie Desjardins as he had seen 
her first, in the flush and promise of her gifted 
and trustful youth. 

He walked onward through the gardens 
and left them and traversed the lanes which 
led to the house where he had his one poor 
chamber. The door stood open, for the air 
was hot, not fresh and dewy as it had been in 
la Bresse. He went up the staircase unseen 
and unheard to his room which was under the 


96 


POUSSETTE. 


roof. The little casement of it was also open 
and looked out to the sky and the sea. 
There was a letter lying on the table, but he 
did not notice it. He went straight to his 
valise, unlocked it, and took out his revolver ; 
the pistol case and a little linen were all which 
were left in it. He drew the charge and 
loaded it again with great care ; he wished to 
die at once and without torment. He looked 
for a moment out to the silvery skies and the 
silvery sea which were the last sights that he 
would ever behold. Then he lifted the re- 
volver to his temple and felt its chill metal 
touch his flesh ; in another moment he would 
have been a dead man. 

But the door was pushed aside ; a sound of 
panting labored breath, and hurrying feet, 
came to his ear ; instinctively he laid aside 
the pistol, and turned toward the doorway. 
Covered with dust and mud, dragging her- 
self feebly along the floor, making little low 
breathless murmurs of delight, Poussette 
staggered up to him, strove to lift herself up 
onto his knee, and failing, fell back into his 
outstretched hands. 

She had found her way to him alone from 
Bourg to Monaco. 

“ My little friend ! my little love ! ” he cried 


POUSSETTE. 


97 


to her, raising her bruised starved body in his 
arms and covering her wistful face with kisses. 
Her eyes one instant gazed up at him in mute 
and unspeakable adoration ; then a sigh of a 
joy too intense to be borne fluttered through 
her little form, and with that sigh she died. 

Had he opened the letter lying on the table 
he would have seen that she had been lost 
from Bourg fifteen days earlier and that all ef- 
forts to trace her had been vain. Care, affec- 
tion, indulgence, comfort, and repose had been 
powerless to reconcile her to exile from her 
master ; the peace of the peaceful garden had 
given no peace to her ; she had never con- 
sented to accept her exile ; she had been rest- 
less, unhappy, intolerant of restraint ; separ- 
ation, however softened and gilded, had been 
unendurable to her. Her faithful soul had 
kept its love within it, and had brooded on its 
loss, refusing to be comforted. When oppor- 
tunity had made possible her escape, she had 
gone out into the unknown, unfriendly, un- 
merciful world, and with her own little wits un- 
aided had found her way back to her beloved. 
How she had accomplished her pilgrimage 
none could ever know. A little thing, so 
small, so humble, so defenceless, all alone in 


POUSSETTE. 


the brazen brutal world of men. Her swollen 
and bleeding feet, her emaciated body, her 
rain-soaked, mud-cloaked fur alone spoke 
piteously of all she had endured. Alone, and 
with no guide but what men called her in- 
stinct, she had made her odyssey with greater 
courage than the great Odysseus himself. 

Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, terror, cruelty, 
blows, bruises, unsheltered nights, unnour- 
ished days, had been her constant portion. 
Perhaps here and there one in ten thousand 
had seen the little travel-stained trembling 
panting thing with some degree of pity, and 
had given her a draught of water, a scrap of 
bread, a kindly touch. But oftener we may 
be sure she had been hooted at and stoned 
and left to starve, and always hindered, never 
helped ; for she was a dog, a creature only fit 
for the furrier’s knife or the scalpel and the 
poisons and the red-hot iron of the scientific 
torturer. The earth had had no pity for her, 
and had torn her feet, and chilled her body, 
and left her stomach famished ; the heavens 
had had no pity for her, and had poured on 
her their icy rains, their piercing winds, their 
scorching sun-rays, their harsh blazing light 
which showed her little creeping figure to the 
human devils of the streets. But she had 


POUSSETTE. 


99 


persevered ; she had found the right way 
through strange places and strange people, 
with no defence, no guide, no assistance ; her 
only friend her own indomitable spirit, her 
only support that great tenacious love which 
can move mountains. The same genius 
which steers the swallow straight over desert 
and ocean to his summer nest beneath some 
northern cave, the same marvellous and mys- 
terious power which brings the nightingale, 
year after year, from the reeds of the Nile, and 
the roses of Hisdostan, to the same green 
nooks in wood or garden by Arno, Loire, or 
Thames, had led her along roads she had 
never traversed, among crowds unkind and 
unknown, through peril and trial, in continual 
dread, and loneliness, and inability to ask for 
aid or pity ; and with all the pangs of want 
and fear gnawing at her heart, home here to 
the feet of the one man she loved. 

And looking in his face she gave one sigh 
of rest and joy : then died. 

Earth has no guerdon for such as she. 
She had spent her little life — her all — lav- 
ishly, and unrewarded. 

Her grave was made in the green garden at 
Bourg. Could she know, she would be con- 
tent; for by her death she saved her master. 

L. of C. 


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RINALDO. 

A * 








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V 

























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4 





























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RINALDO. 


San Dominico was, only a few years since, 
still a peaceful and poetic place, keeping close 
its memories of Dante and Fra Angelico, and 
of Boccaccio and of his ladies, and lying still 
and shady under the maternal knees of the 
Fiesolanian mountains. Its one-arched bridge, 
which long ago used to bristle with the lance- 
heads of the riders of hawkhood and the reit- 
ers of Barbarossa, still spans the stony bed of 
the dried-up waters; and the deep shade of 
those cypresses and cedars, which not so long 
ago sheltered the leonine head of Savage 
Landor, still falls across the sward of his 
lawns “ ‘ twixt Afric and Mensola.” But that 
is all that remains of the old pristine loveliness 
of the place ; the axe of the peasant, the pick- 
axe of the builder, the greed of the money- 
grubber, the frightful follies of the jerry- 
builder have defaced and devastated it, and 
the jangling bells of electric wires break in on 


io4 


RINALDO. 


its stillness as the tramway trains scurry on 
their noisy way up and down those historic 
slopes. Haste, cheapness, and vulgarity — 
the three devils which possess the body and 
soul of the present age — have come even up 
here under the shadows of the wide woods of 
Doccia and the topaz and amethyst hues of 
the Apennine spurs; and the green world in 
which the lovers and the ladies of the Decame- 
rone loitered, and laughed, and made the air 
musical with canzone and lute, is no more to 
be found save in a few leafy nooks hidden 
away behind gray walls, as if ashamed of their 
own beauty, in a time which only adores dust 
and dirt, hurry and cunning, sham and stuc- 
co, quick profits and ill-gotten gains. 

In one of such nooks as these, which still 
hold their place, silvery with olive and dark 
with cypress and ilex, there is a small square 
stone house, very old, very poor, which leans 
up against the back wall of a villa, and has 
above it a hill-side of yellow sandstone, and 
around it fields intersected by fruit-trees and 
maples. The road is far away, and from it 
nothing is seen of the hurrying tramway 
trains or the crawling carts which go up 
through San Dominico to Fiesole itself. The 
fields belong to the villa ; and the cottage is 


RINALDO . 


105 


all alone, with a little plot of ground of its 
own, and no relationship to its statelier neigh- 
bor on the hill. 

Its owner is a lawyer in the city, and its oc- 
cupants are, or were, a mother and grandson, 
with a small female child ; poor people, ex- 
ceedingly poor people, who gathered together 
with difficulty the one hundred francs a year 
which the landlord exacted for their dwelling; 
fifty francs twice a year, paid six months be- 
fore it was due, after the Florentine custom 
and obligation, is a heavy toll on the liveli- 
hood of those who labor hardly for every 
scrap which they put in their mouths and 
every rag with which they cover their bones. 

The old woman, Nonna Tessa, as she was 
called by everyone, had once been a well-to- 
do peasant on that same hill-side, but her son 
had been but a boy of twelve when his father 
had been killed by a steam-engine running 
on the then newly-made railway at the foot 
of the hills, and his grandfather had died a 
little later of bronchitis and fever one hard 
winter time. The land they lived on had 
just changed hands when this last death- took 
place ; the new owner had not been disposed 
to leave a good farm to a lonely woman and 
a mere boy ; they had received notice to quit 


io6 


RINALDO. 


and had come then to this little cottage to 
make a living as best they might. Those 
who have been peasants on the same soil all 
their lives consider it to be a great downfall 
and humiliation when they are forced to be- 
come mere day-laborers or hand-to-mouth 
gainers of their daily bread. Tessa, who 
was a brave and industrious woman, tried 
to make ends meet by washing linen, plait- 
ing, spinning, and chicken keeping, and the 
lad, Rinaldo, worked on the little plot of 
ground, and did odd jobs on the farms near, 
and at the stables where the diligence horses 
were changed, and went into the city on er- 
rands for anybody who would so employ him, 
and was always cheerful, good-natured, ac- 
tive, and gay. It was exceedingly difficult, 
however, to make enough to live upon, al- 
though their wants were few and their patience 
extreme. The years went on, and ’Naldo 
grew a man and Tessa an old woman ; and, 
as they had not enough for themselves, he 
was foolish enough to take a third mouth to 
feed. He married, and brought a girl as 
poor as themselves to the little stone cabin 
above the olive-trees. She was the daughter 
of a blind cobbler, and carried with her no 
dower whatever except her shining brown 


RINALDO. 


107 


eyes and her broad happy smile. She died 
in childbed two years later and left a little 
boy behind her, who in his turn was called 
Rinaldo, ’Naldo, or ’Naldino, in the mouths 
of the country people. 

The elder Rinaldo at thirty years old 
looked fifty, for he worked so hard and ate 
so little ; he was always on his legs and out 
in all weathers ; and the soles of his bare 
feet were hard as horn, and the skin of his 
face and throat was burned brown, and lined 
liked a crumpled autumn leaf. But he kept 
his gay and pleasant humor to the last, and 
was quite content with his lowly lot : he could 
run into the city as fast as a hare scuds be- 
fore the hounds, and could labor at odd jobs 
all the day through on nothing but a bare 
crust and a pipeful of tobacco. 

His mother, though she said little about it, 
never ceased to regret her old life on her 
goodly farm. To be only a hind for daily 
hire seemed to her a sorry fate for her beloved 
son. She could see, across the valley on the 
opposite hill-side, the long gray buildings 
with their red-tiled roofs, where she had 
passed all her early womanhood ; and her 
heart was full of longing for them, though 
twenty years had gone by since she had 


108 RINALDO. 

come down for the last time through the fa- 
miliar fields, her boy carrying their crockery 
and hardware upon his back, and she some 
hens and a cock under her right arm, and a 
big bundle of linen under the left one. 

There the place which she had left lay, un- 
changed on the sunny mountain side, its blue 
smoke curling upward, its gable ends dotted 
with pigeon - holes, and brushed by flying 
doves ; its pear and peach trees and wal- 
nuts standing up thickly all around it, and 
yet never more would she sleep under its 
roof-tree and reign as mistress in its vast 
old kitchens. Another family was there ; a 
noisy, numerous, ever - multiplying family : 
graybeards and beldames, sons and grand- 
sons, women of all ages, children of both 
sexes. They were good enough people : 
honest, steady, laborious ; she never said an 
ill word of them, but the pain of her exile 
was as great to her as though she had been 
driven out from there only a day before, and 
the iron of banishment in her soul never 
ceased to harry and wound her. If, instead 
of marrying that poor, useless, penniless crea- 
ture, her son had found a mate in some well- 
to-do rural household, perhaps they might 
some day have gone back thither ; who could 


RINALDO. 


109 


say that they would not ? But he had set his 
heart on a poor, feckless, friendless lass, and 
it had kept him back from ever rising up one 
step above the humble lot to which he had 
sunk. It was nobody’s fault ; if anyone’s, it 
was that of the stupid, newfangled, monstrous 
machine which had struck her good man his 
death-blow. What would you ? What will 
be will be, said Nonna Tessa, with a sigh. 
But her handsome boy had become a bat- 
tered and weather-beaten man, fixed in his 
dull place, like a mile-post in the ground, and 
he had been forced to toil, toil, toil on a half- 
filled belly all his years, instead of eating 
bread from the corn he sowed, and gathering 
fruit from the trees he pruned, as he should 
have done, and as his fathers and grand- 
fathers always had done before him ; and be- 
fore he was forty he died of lung disease, 
leaving on her hands his young son eighteen, 
and a little dark gypsy-like female child, off- 
spring of a second and equally improvident 
marriage. 

“ Never mind, granny,” said the younger 
Rinaldo, who had grown up tall and fair and 
comely. “ We are happy as we are, as long 
as we can keep the cottage, and there is the 
Morianinina.” 


IIO 


RINALDO . 


He was really happy, a good, cheery, 
peaceable, humorous, lissome lad, trudging 
about in snow and mud, as in sun and wind, 
and never thinking of blaming God or man. 

The Morianinina, or the little Moor, was his 
small half-sister, a bright, quick, brown-faced, 
motherless child. 

“ We have always enough to eat on Sun- 
days/’ he said to the little girl. “ Many 
poor folks never get a bellyful once, no, not 
once in the whole twelve months.” 

This was the way he looked at life, with- 
out being sensible that there was any credit 
or courage in his cheerful content, and he 
wished the little brown-skinned, black-eyed 
Morianinina to share his cheerfulness. Times 
were hard ; and he was often cold and hot, 
pinched by north wind and scorched by noon- 
day sun, hungry and tired and wet and ach- 
ing, to bed with empty stomach and up at 
dawn to begin the day’s fatigues afresh ; but 
he was happy despite it all. There was the 
old grandam, and there was the merry child, 
and Rinaldo, when he knelt and crossed him- 
self on the bare stones of the church at mass, 
said his paternoster in unaffected gratitude. 
While he himself had health and strength, 
while his grandmother was hale and well. 


RINALDO. 


Ill 


while the child was good and merry, he felt 
that life was worth the living. He could not 
reason about it, nor weigh its claims and fail- 
ures as educated people can ; but the sense 
of contentment went with him, making his 
rough lot pleasant, as a singing brook will 
make a steep and stony path seem gay to the 
tired wayfarer who treads it. 

When the months of February and August 
came round in each year, sometimes his heart 
did fail him ; they are dreaded months to all 
Florentines ; they are the times in which rent 
is due. Happy are the possidenti who have 
no rent to pay ! Happy are those who own 
the roof which shelters them ! Except to 
those, the almond blossom of February, the 
watermelon of August, bring terror and cark- 
ing care with them for all, since they are the 
signs of the fatal dates on which the rent 
money must be forthcoming, or the home be 
broken up and lost. 

To gather together the six months’ rent is 
the preoccupation of many a day and night 
to the Tuscan poor. The soiled crumpled 
paper money is saved so hardly, stored up so 
cautiously, visited so anxiously, lest thieves 
should break in and steal it before the mo- 
mentous day of its payment shall arrive ! 


112 RINALDO. 

When you want anything, everything, all the 
days of your life : food, fuel, clothing, boots 
and shoes, a shirt to your back, a sheet to 
your bed, bread in your pot, meat in your 
soup kettle, when maybe a sick woman lies 
on your mattress, and a hungry urchin is cry- 
ing for a meal, it is hard work indeed, it is an 
effort and almost beyond human nature, to 
amass and hoard up that rent money, and 
leave it untouched whatever you suffer. To 
do so is one of those agonizing trials of the 
very poor which none but they can feel and 
fathom. The rent was the spectre which 
kept Nonna Tessa wide awake in long win- 
ter nights when sleep was so much needed 
to make her forget her thin coverlet and her 
aching rheumatism. The rent was the night- 
mare which haunted the deep noontide slum- 
ber of Rinaldo, when he lay at rest in hot 
midsummer days among the wheat- sheaves 
or the bean-plants, on the grass of a dusty 
roadside, or on the straw in a stable loft. 

The little stone house had been their home 
now for a score of years, dear, sacred, pre- 
cious ; if they lost that little hut there would 
be nothing for them but to descend to the 
dreary desolate existence, called a dozzina> 
life in the hired chamber, sleep on the hired 


RINALDO. 


113 


Ded, all sanctity and privacy gone, all peace 
and family seclusion ended. The little gray 
stone cottage wa;s the one thing which gave 
them dignity in their own eyes, and gained 
them respect from their neighbors : dividing 
them by its privacy from the sorrier herd of 
tramps and vagrants, and homeless laboring 
folk. And every year the same terror lest 
they should fail to pay the rent and so lose it 
hung over them always ; for were it unpaid, 
they knew that the notice to quit would be 
served on them without pity, and the cottage 
let to others over their heads ; aye, were they 
even but a single week too late in payment. 

In the winter the diligence helped them to 
make up the money ; and in the summer, the 
fig-tree. When the roads were bad the 
wheels of the vehicles often needed help to 
get out of the ruts and mud, and when the 
season was good the fig-tree bore a fine crop. 
It was the only tree which belonged to them, 
standing in their little plot of ground, striking 
its roots far underneath the walls and out to* 
ward the fields ; a goodly tree, with white 
criteria flowering about its roots in spring, 
and the hens and chickens pattering, and the 
little brown child playing, beneath its branches 
in all seasons. 


RINALDO. 


1 14 

Rinaldo, moreover, had another anxiety at 
his heart of which he said nothing to any- 
body, but on which his thoughts brooded 
long and often. He was twenty-three years 
old and he was in love. Higher up on his 
hill-side stood a house with one big old ilex- 
tree in front of it, and a lonely neglected gar- 
den facing the setting sun. The house had 
seen better days, and the garden had once 
been rich in flower and fruit ; but the one 
served now as a dwelling for many poor 
families, and the other was now only a wild 
tangle of bush and briar, honeysuckle and 
elderberry, straggling roses and self-sown 
groundsel. 

It was an old place, and could have told 
many tales of war and rapine, of lust and car- 
nage ; and the red tide of conquest had rolled 
by it many a day to pour in desolating fury 
over the fertile vale below. But the only 
thing about it which Rinaldo knew or cared 
for was a lancet window high up under its 
broad-eaved roof, where the face of his sweet- 
heart could often be seen, and a south wall 
where the honeysuckle ran riot, on which she 
often sat when twilight fell, watching the 
lights shine far, far away in the evening 
shadows where the distant city lay. She 


RINALDO. 


n$ 

was a fair girl with ruddy lips and rippling 
hair the color of a fresh-fallen chestnut ; her 
fingers were almost always nimbly working 
at a tress of straw, and her feet in warm 
weather were bare where they hung down 
among the grass, for she was wellnigh as 
poor as he ; but she was set high above him 
in his sight and his mothers, for she was the 
daughter of Matted Lencioni, the Procaccio. 

In the first mild evenings of spring he was 
wont to stroll up there while the nightingales 
were singing in every clump of bay and 
thicket of wild rose, and lean his tired back 
against the old house wall, and look up into 
his Nita’s light hazel eyes, and forget that he 
was ragged and hungry and poor, that he 
worked like a starved mule, and was never 
sure one day of gaining his bread for the 
next. He was young, he was strong, he was 
sanguine, and though his shoulders ached 
and his thighs throbbed with the fatigue of 
the past day, his heart was as light in that 
evening time as the white petals of pear and 
plum blossom, which the wind blew like snow 
along the side of the hill. 

“ She is not for you. She will be never 
for you,” said his grandmother, often, who 
was wiser than he. But he heeded her not ; 


Ii6 


RINALDO . 


and returned to the light of the gold-brown 
eyes as the nightingale returns to the rose- 
bush which it built in last year. 

In the old ruined garden there was a 
shrine with a stone Madonna and child half 
hidden in honeysuckle, and the long, dark- 
green tresses of capsicums ; and there timid- 
ly, furtively, he and she plighted their troth 
to each other. They were never wholly 
alone, someone was always within earshot ; 
the house held many women, and one or 
other of them looked after the girl when her 
father was away. But like all lovers they 
were quick and fertile in invention, and es- 
caped observation now and then ; and one 
dusky evening, when the moon was only a 
slender crescent, and the mountains and the 
clouds were blended in one, and the only light 
was a glow-worm’s under a cabbage leaf, 
they were unnoticed for a few moments, and 
he said, tremblingly, “If I might tell thee?” 
— and she said, wistfully, “ If I might hear 
thee ? ” — and without more words they kissed 
each other and then knelt down in the wet 
grass, and asked the Mother of Love to smile 
on them. 

Love is a rude thing among the poor; 
rough as their labors, coarse as their food; 


RINALDO, 


1 17 


Rinaldo was not better nor gentler than his 
fellows. But in that moment, before the Ma- 
donna’s shrine, he, poor, simple, dull toiler as 
he was, became for a moment a poet. 

He took up the little glow-worm out of the 
grass, and held it tenderly in his hands. 

“ I am poor as this little worm,” he said, 
with a quiver in his voice. “ But there is a 
great light in my heart as in his ; it shines 
through the blackest night : it is my love for 
thee.” 

Then he set down the little beast, and left 
it to creep on unmolested under the honey- 
suckle coils, and he held the hands of Nita 
clasped in his own against his breast. 

“ They say that the ladies in the town wear 
precious stones that glitter like that worm,” 
murmured the girl, as her eyes followed the 
pale-green light beneath the leaves. 

Rinaldo let go her hands. 

His mind was not awake or analytical 
enough to know why it was that the words 
jarred upon him in his momentarily exalted 
and emotional mood ; but they disappointed 
him and chilled him. 

“ Women’s thoughts are always with gew- 
gaws,” he reflected, sadly ; and he, alas ! he 
would not be able to buy her even a sham 


klfrALDO. 


1 1 8 

gold chain or a string of little seed pearls, 
but only a plain brass hoop for a wedding- 
ring. A wedding-ring ! The mere idea of it 
brought him down from his ardor and dreams, 
and set him face to face with harsh facts. 

Would ever Matteo let him stand with her 
before the altar ? 

Matteo was good-natured and cordial with 
him whenever they met, but between that 
kind of good fellowship and the acceptance 
of him in a closer relationship there was 
a wide difference ; and that he could ever 
bridge over the difference between them 
seemed to him hopeless. But his temper 
was sanguine, and love is always confident in 
its own rights and triumphs. It looked like 
madness, indeed, for him to dream of it : he 
who had the old woman and the small child 
to keep, and little or nothing on which to 
keep them or himself. But such improvident 
unions are made every day, the lovers trust- 
ing to chance and their own right hand to 
get them bread and set a roof over their 
heads. If prudence ruled the world, the 
priesthoods would have but little to do so far 
as the sacrament of marriage would go. 

Rinaldo was no sillier or more selfish than 
his fellows when he said to himself that he 


RINALDO. 


1 19 

would try ‘and win her father’s consent to his 
suit. With a timid spirit but a hopeful heart 
he saw the old man the next forenoon stand- 
ing gloomily at the side of the road, watching 
the laying of wires and plantings of posts for 
an electric railway along the highway which 
he had trodden so many thousands of times 
in fair weather and in foul. 

The old Procaccio was a small, gray, bony 
man, worn very thin in the incessant move- 
ment which his calling entailed, and battered 
and browned by exposure till his skin was 
like a shrivelled' yellow leaf of December. 
He had been a cheery, humorous companion 
in the days of his youth and earlier manhood, 
but things had gone ill with him, and now 
that his teeth were few and needed tender 
meats, he had to eat more bare dry crusts 
than in his boyhood, when they had been as 
strong and white and sound as a young 
dog’s, and had been able to crack and crunch 
plum-stones and almond-shells. The sense 
that life, like food, grew daily scantier and 
harder to him, made his tem'per bad, and his 
words bitter. He had always been a man of 
mark among his fellows, and now of later 
years he knew that he had lived too long, 
and this knowledge soured him. 


120 


RINALDO . 


The Procaccio is a man who does the er- 
rands of a district, or of a commune, carry- 
ing letters and parcels, buying small articles 
on commission, taking messages to and fro 
for the country people who are too busy to 
go on such errands themselves ; at once 
carrier and postman, go-between and ambas- 
sador, pedlar and agent, gossip and money- 
changer. He is out in all weathers, foul 
or fair ; he usually trots on sturdy legs, 
grown by habit as quick in movement as if 
they were made of mercury and steel ; he is 
always fond of gossip, and generally fond of 
wine when he can get it, which is often, for 
no one grudges him a glass ; he knows the 
affairs of all the country-side, their loves and 
hates, their ways and means, and though 
very generally he cannot read, he never by 
any chance makes a mistake in the delivery 
of what is confided to him. In the districts 
which have no regular communication with 
the towns except through him, he is a person 
of importance, more esteemed and more 
trusted than the postman, almost as much so 
as the priest. In the Fiesolanian highways, 
diligences and tramways have already robbed 
the Procaccio of his proud position, and ren- 
dered him almost a nullity, but still in out- 


R WALDO. 


121 


lying hamlets and in the more distant nooks 
and spurs of the hill-side he is the person most 
employed and esteemed whenever there is 
any errand to be done or message carried. 

The old man who had been the Mercury of 
these hills above San Dominico, in days 
when the lordly travelling carriage of rich 
strangers and the strings of charcoal or bag- 
gage wagons were the only vehicles moving 
up and down the curves and inclines of its 
roads, had been in his early years in inces- 
sant request and employment, carrying many 
written and oral communications, and bend- 
ing under the weight of numerous packets 
and parcels and small boxes. To many a 
household along that sunny mountain slope 
his going and coming had been the sole con- 
nection which they had ever had between 
their own ingle-nook and the world which 
lay beneath the glittering vanes and empur- 
pled domes of the city which they could see 
in the plain at their feet, 

Where white and wide, 

Washed by the morning’s water-gold, 

Florence lay stretched on the mountain side. 

“ Folks were happier in those days,” said 
old Matteo, with the obstinacy (or the wis- 


122 


RINALDO. 


dom) of old age; “ they bided at home, and 
stuck to their own soil, and ate and drank 
the food and the drink which they had baked 
and brewed with their own hands. They 
were not always careering along strange 
roads, and swilling stinking chemicals, and 
spelling out rubbishy news-sheets, and bother- 
ing their brains with other people’s business 
as they all do now. If they had a letter writ- 
ten for them it was really because they had 
something to say, and if they had anything 
bought for them they gave sound silver 
pieces, and they got sound solid goods in re- 
turn. A man’s Sunday jacket of velvet would 
wear, a lifetime then, and so would a woman’s 
woollen gown. Now it is all cheap and rot- 
ten ; easy to come by and quick to go ; fine 
as poppies and nasty as stinkwort ; from the 
stamped cottons the wenches wear to the 
dried weeds the lads stuff in their pipes, it is 
all cheap and rotten, cheap and rotten, and the 
stomachs turn and the heads turn with them. 
What do the trumpery clothes, and the doc- 
tored drinks, and the hurry and scurry, make 
of the folk ? Poor, bow-legged, weak-kneed, 
gawky things who must get up behind a steam- 
engine, and be carried, like so many bales of 
wool, every time they want to stir a step from 


RINALDO . 


123 


their doors. In my days men were up at red 
of dawn and trotting sturdily from hill-top to 
town gate, never dreaming of wanting other 
help than Shanks’s mare, and back again by 
sunset or by moonrise with their business 
done ; the sweat on their foreheads indeed, 
but not an ache in their whole body. Nowa- 
days, Lord love you ! only see the shame of 
it ! They must all huddle together in a pen 
behind a smoking chimney, and be carried 
wherever they want to go, cooped up and 
cramped like fowls in a crate too small for 
them. Do you wonder the lads are stunted 
and bandy-legged ? Do you wonder the 
women frizz their hair up in a touzled clout, 
and so long as they have a smart brooch on 
their breast, never care that they’ve holes in 
their stockings and a rag for a shift ? In my 
days the girls wore the flax and the wool 
which they spun, and the boys footed the 
highroads merrily on their bare feet.” 

“ Father cannot forgive the iron horse,” 
said his daughter. 

When first the iron lines had been laid 
down in the centre of the roadway for the 
iron horse to run on, Matteo had stood for 
hours together staring at the men laying the 
woodwork and the metal rails between the 


124 


&INALD6 . 


hedges of elder and briar-rose ; seeing in 
those ugly bars and wires the ruin of his own 
small calling and the greater ruin of the peo- 
ple’s health and manliness. 

“ What a poor thread-paper creature a man 
must be who cannot tread his score of miles 
on his own two legs ! ” he said now, with the 
natural scorn of one who all his life had gone 
to and fro in all weathers untiringly. 

“ Are ye all born cripples?” he said bit- 
terly to the lads who were like him watching 
the laying of the metals for the electric folly 
which was to replace his old foe the steam 
one. “ Are ye all come into the world with- 
ered, like a dry gourd, or lame like a shot 
quail, that ye must need lightning to carry ye 
up and down over your own native hills ? 
The mothers that bare ye must blush for you ! 
Before I would waste a groat on that new 
hobby I would wear the nails off my toes on 
the stones ! ” 

The lads laughed, lazy like all their genera- 
tion, and to tease him said that they would be 
able to save the price of the fares in the shoe 
leather which the new steed would spare them. 

“ Wear the soles of your natural feet as 
thick as hide like mine and ye won’t need 
shoes at all,” said the old Procaccio, setting 


RINALDO. 


125 


his bare heels down on the flint and mud of 
the road, heels made so tough and horny by 
long walking that they could tread sharp 
stones unfelt, and crush a scorpion unstung, 
and stamp down an adders head at a blow. 

“ Well, we shall save time by the steam 
wagon at any rate,” said one of the younger 
men. 

“ What is the use of ‘ saving ’ time when 
you do nothing good with the time ? ” re- 
torted Matteo, scornfully. “ What do you do 
when you get down in the city ? Burn your 
stomachs with made-up wines in chemists' 
shops, and your mouths with chopped dung 
which you call tobacco ? Stare at the lottery 
offices and buy a dream-book at the wizard’s ? 
Your legs would take you down to the town 
full soon enough for any good you do there.” 

Rinaldo, who was standing near, said tim- 
idly, “ There is not much time saved by these 
steam brutes either. I can cross country to 
town quicker than they can run, taking into 
account all their stoppages and accidents. 
I beat the Sesto tram-cars the week before 
last ; beat them clean by fourteen minutes.” 

The Procaccio nodded approvingly and 
glanced with pleasure at the sinewy limbs 
and steel-like muscles of the younger man. 


126 


RINALDO. 


“You’ll be Procaccio after me, ’Naldo, if so 
be as any Procaccio is wanted at all in times 
to come,” he said with a friendly nod as he 
walked away on his sturdy old legs with his 
head hung down and his heart heavy. 

“ The lads and lasses will always be go- 
ing gadding to city,” he muttered, “ and the 
pence will burn their pockets till they’re spent, 
and the soup will burn the pipkin at home, 
and the worm will eat his fill in the weedy 
fields. Gadabouts never kept house well, 
nor well drew plough yet, since the world 
was made.” 

And he went mournfully away, weighted 
by his prescient sense of youth’s inferiority, 
and by the burdens of his own old age. 

In his earlier manhood he had made ends 
meet very regularly and fairly, for his services 
were in constant demand and were amply 
paid : food was then cheap, wine was then 
wholesome, and life was then easy. But an 
open-air occupation is apt to leave a man 
stranded in old age when rheumatism stiffens 
his joints, and those changes which others 
call progress carry the tide of existence be- 
yond him, and leave him altogether aside like 
an old hulk bedded in a beach. 

Some employment old Matteo still got, but 


RINALDO. 


12J 


people thought him rusty and slow, and were 
apt to give their post-bags and their parcels 
to the conductor of the tram - wagons. 
Those whose farms and cottages were high 
up above the main road, were still glad of 
his services indeed, but to do their errands 
took him far and long, and, although he hated 
to confess it even to his own thoughts, his 
knees refused to mount those steep paths and 
stony ascents which in other days had been 
no more trouble to them than they are to the 
limbs of the goat. 

On this day Rinaldo followed him, and 
overtook him and touched his arm. 

“ You spoke well and truly,” he said, shyly, 
for he was always in awe of Matteo. “ The 
calling is gone all to pieces with these steam 
beasts on the roads, and the folks all flying 
here, there, everywhere, every day. And I 
fear me you find the hill-work try you sorely 
now you are no longer so young as you were. 
If you would like me to do it for you I would 
with pleasure, and you need not give me a 
penny ; it would be all done for friendship 
and good-will.” 

Matteo turned and looked at him. “ It is 
only a fool or a trickster who works unpaid/' 1 ' 
he said, ungraciously. 


128 


RINALDO. 


Rinaldo colored to the roots of his fair 
curls. “Iam neither, and you know it, good 
friend,” he said, simply. “ I have time on my 
hands, worse luck for me, and I will gladly 
go for you wherever it tries your strength to 

g°” 

“ Humph ! ” said the old Procaccio, doubt- 
fully. “ You mean you will slip into my 
shoes when my feet are laid shoeless in 
mother earth ? ” 

“ I was not thinking of that,” said the 
younger man, truthfully. “ If I can be of use, 
use me. I am only a poor devil, but I am 
strong, as you know ; and the people’s pa- 
pers and money will be as safe with me as 
they are with you.” 

“ Oh, as for that, everyone knows you are 
an honest fellow,” answered Matteo. “No 
one ever said otherwise. But a motive you 
have in your fine words ; there is always a 
motive in a man’s smooth words, just as there 
is the sting as well as the honey in a bee’s 
tail. Out with it, lad ! Didn’t I say to you 
just now that if any Procaccio at all is wanted 
after me you're the best fitted for it of them 
all?” 

Thus encouraged Rinaldo grew redder and 
redder, stammered and was mute ; pulled his 


RINALDO. 


129 


hat off his curls and put it on again ; kicked 
up the pebbles on the hill-side path, plucked 
off a bit of bryony and nibbled it aimlessly ; 
then gathering up all his courage in a rush 
he muttered : “ The truth is — I love your 
daughter.” 

“ I feared as much,” said old Matteo, 
gruffly, in a tone which fell like a stone on the 
warm and trembling hopes in the younger 
man’s breast. 

“ Lord love ye ! ” he added furiously, stand- 
ing still in the road ; " are ye mad, crazed, 
daft, my lad? Be these times for marrying 
and giving in marriage ? Could Nita and you 
make up wherewithal to be sure of a loaf? 
Are you not beggars both ? Have I not lived 
from hand to mouth all my years, and do not 
you do the same ? Love ! Love ! Go to, 
you poor fool ! Will love fill your soup-pot 
with beans or give you oil to moisten your 
crust ? You are a personable boy, and she a 
comely wench, but will good looks last long 
in foul fortune ? Can a shapely body be fed 
upon air? Holy blood of Jesus, save me! 
Was ever such madness known ? My girl 
has hardly a rag to her back, and this lad is 
as lean as a church mouse, and has one old 
woman and a mere babe to keep as it is ! ” 


130 


RINALDO, , 


“ Nita loves poor Morianinina,” said Ri« 
naldo, very humbly. 

“ Wenches always say that beforehand/’ 
grunted the Procaccio. 

“ I am sure it is true,” said the younger 
man, “and the little child loves her: who 
would not ? ’’ 

“ Do you call that love, jackanapes,” said 
Matteo, harshly, “ to lead a young woman to 
a fireless hearth, a breadless platter, a bed of 
dry leaves, and a house chock-full already ? 
Love ! a pack of selfish rottenness and vil- 
lainy ! Get out of my way with your lies and 
your trash ! ” 

Rinaldo’s face grew pale under its ruddy tan. 

“ That is harsh, Matteo,” he said, with pa- 
tient temper. “ Is Nita so well off now that 
she may not come to need a stout arm to 
work for her ? You know best whether she 
is or not. But I fear — I fear •” 

“You hope, you mean,” said the old man, 
harshly. “ If my lass were as I should have 
been able to keep her twenty years ago, it is 
not the like of a poor boy such as you who 
could pretend to her. Nay, nay, ’Naldo,” he 
added in a gentler tone, for he saw the pain 
and affront which he had given expressed on 
the young man’s candid and guileless counte- 


RINALDO. 


131 

nance. “ Nay, it is no crime to be a poor 
man ; poor am I, and poor I shall always be, 
and the very foot-paths we tread are no more 
our own ; and from bad to worse we shall all 
go. But to wed in poverty is to triple it ; and 
if there be not bread for one eater, why risk 
the bringing of more hungry mouths into a 
world chock-full as it is ? Put this thing out 
of your mind, my lad. Nita is no more for 
you than if she were a king’s daughter.” 

“ I did not think you so harsh, Matteo,” 
said Rinaldo, his eyes filling with tears as he 
spoke. 

“ One is cruel to be kind,” said the old 
man, whose heart was kinder than his words, 
and who had a soft place in it for this well- 
built simple fellow who strode over the 
ground with such a lithe firm step as recalled 
to the old Procaccio the days of his own 
youth when he had gone from hill to valley as 
easily as a swallow sweeps from mountain 
tower to city caves. The girl might do still 
worse, he knew ; she might take up with 
some loon from the town who would mew her 
up in a stifling garret, and leave her in rags 
while he drank in wine-shops. He glanced 
doubtfully at the poor suitor who had already 
a mother and a babe to maintain. 


132 


RINALDO . 


“ If you were only in regular work/’ he 
said, with a little relenting in his tone. “ But 
no, no, not even then,” he added, hastily ; “ I 
cannot give my girl to misery, and there are 
warm men and solid ones wanting her as well 
as you.” 

“ So I know,” said Rinaldo, humbly. “ But 
she favors me more than those.” 

“ Men are always dupes and dolts with no 
more head than a pin,” said the old Procac- 
cio, harshly. “ She will walk with you, talk 
with you, and laugh with you, but she will do 
no more, mind that.” 

“ And the errands ? May I not help you ? 
You are not strong as you used to be,” said 
the younger man, with a sound like a sob in 
his throat. 

“ There are few errands to do, and those 
few, please the saints, I will do myself still for 
many a year,” said Matteo, offended and in- 
furiated at the youngster’s persistent and ill- 
judged reverence to his own age, while he 
thrust his ash staff angrily down on a heap of 
broken granite on the road ; no man likes to 
have it taken for granted that age or infirmity 
unfits him for his daily calling. 

Then he turned round and looked the 
young man full in the face. 


R I WALDO. 


133 


“You poor blind simpleton! You think 
you know my girl ? Because she has pretty 
yellow eyes, and red lips that pout and smile, 
you think she will sing you a love song all 
the summer, and all the year ? Pooh ! get 
out with you for a fool ! Nita is no shep- 
herdess of a moon-sung stornello to be fed 
on the mere pipings of a wooden flute. When 
she gives herself for good she will want in 
return a silk gown on her back and baked 
meats on her platter. When you are older 
you will find out that women are all like this. 
Don’t fret. You are a good lad. Put this 
nonsense out of your head and I will forget 
all about it, I promise you, and will speak a 
fair word for you with the neighbors so that 
you shall stand in my shoes when I be 
gone.” 

Then he would hear no more of his daugh- 
ter, were it ever so, but struck across the 
fields with a gesture as though he waved 
aside some importunate gnat which teased 
him ; and Rinaldo was left alone, his heart 
throbbing with anger and sorrow. 

He went with a sick heart home to his 
cabin under the fig-tree. The child ran to 
meet him with joyous cries, and the old wom- 
an laid by her distaff and smiled all over 


*34 


kIXALDO. 


her wrinkled sunburnt face, but he put them 
both gently aside and sat down on the rough 
bench by the door, with a heavy sigh. 

“You have spoken out, and had 'Nay’ 
from Matteo?” asked Tessa, anxiously. 

Rinaldo nodded, and his head drooped 
lower and lower on his chest. 

“ I knew how it would be/’ muttered his 
grandmother. “ My boy, what could any man 
in his senses say otherwise ? Is this a house 
to which to bring home a bride ? ” 

“ She is ill off as she is ; she is used to want 
and to work.” 

“Ay, but want and work with children 
tugging at your breasts, and your breasts 
empty and dry from want of food — that is 
worse. Matteo does well to save her from 
knowing it ; a girl does not think of a wom- 
an’s woes.” 

“ How would it be with her if he died to- 
night ? ” 

“ He wishes her well placed, so that when 
he dies he may die in peace.” 

“A woman is well where her heart is.” 

“ Nay, not if her body pine.” 

She herself knew all the long slow dreary 
toil and pain ; the days which were all alike, 
the nights wakeful from hunger and sorrow, 


RINALDO. 


135 


the carking care of children when there was 
no milk to still their cries, the wearing dread 
of the morrow, the ever-present sense that 
all industry, all travail, all prevention, all sac- 
rifice, would not at the end prevent the lonely 
and unpitied death on the wayside stones 
like the death of a starved stoat. 

To him, despite all hardships, the possibil- 
ities of the future seemed fair; but to the old 
peasant who had sixty years behind her, life 
had been but a hard taskmaster. 

Suddenly she turned her dim watery eyes 
upon him. 

" If I went from you,” she said, slowly, "if 
I went elsewhere, maybe you would have 
room for the girl. I can go — somewhere — 
anywhere, and you will be free, my lad. To 
be sure you must keep the child ; but may- 
hap she would not mind that. It is I who 
am in the way.” 

Rinaldo started to his feet ; a sense of his 
own selfishness smote him with remorse. 
He laid his hands tenderly on Nonna Tessa’s 
shoulders. 

" Never while I have breath,” he said, with 
warmth. "Never, oh, never! Oh, granny! 
could you think it of me that I would earn 
Paradise itself at the price of seeing you take 


RINALDO. 


136 

your old bones amongst strangers? You 
have been good to me all my days. Whilst 
I have bit or drop for myself you shall share 
them. Matteo is a just man if hard ; he would 
never ask me to do such a vileness.” 

“It would be human nature,” muttered the 
old woman. “ When the foal grows a colt 
he wants his dam no more ; he goes to frolic 
with the mares in the pasture. I am only a 
drag on you, my lad, though it may not be 
for long.” 

“ May it be years and years,” said Rinaldo, 
with sincere fervor. “ If your seat were 
empty, granny, there would be an empty 
place in my heart, and it would ache and ache 
and ache, and no smile of woman would still 
it. What we have seen from our cradle we 
want till we get to our graves.” 

“And that is true, my lad,” said Tessa, 
gravely, for there was always within her the 
yearning for her old home, so near, there, over 
the side of the hill, and yet, to her, lost for- 
ever. 

“ Jump me, ’Naldo, and do not cry ! ” said 
the little brown baby, pressing her curly head 
to his knees. 

Rinaldo, always good - natured, lifted the 
child above his head and swung her up into 


R hVALDO. 


137 


the white blossoming - boughs of a young pear- 
tree among the tender green and against the 
bright blue sky. The white pear flowers, the 
dark, ruddy child’s face, the blue radiant air, 
made a glad picture above his head, but he 
saw it dimly through his tears. 

The old woman the little orphan, the lowly 
home, these were his portion, in these his duty 
lay; he felt that never would there come 
thither to him the girl who sighed for the 
stones which shone like the glow-worm. She 
had kissed him in the moonlight among the 
honeysuckle flowers under the Madonna’s 
placid smile, but she would never share his 
daily lot. 

Matteo had spoken, and believed, with the 
credulous self-sufficiency of age, that his mere 
word would suffice to put out the marsh-fires 
of an imprudent and unwelcome love. He 
rated his daughter soundly, and threatened to 
mew her up in a convent if she dallied and 
toyed with a penniless lad like the one whom 
she now favored ; he watched her sharply 
for a few weeks, and sent her to her room at 
nightfall, and took away the pence she made 
by her plaiting ; but after a little time his zeal 
cooled, and he forgot to look after her in the 
long light evenings of the early summer, 


138 


RINALDO. 


or to learn what she did in the days of his 
absence, when he was trudging along the hill- 
sides or through the streets and lanes of the 
city. 

In such hours she and Rinaldo met as 
lovers ever have done since the world w T as 
young ; met hastily, furtively, fearfully, but all 
the more sweetly for that. The soft owls flit- 
ting through the shadows, and the nightingales 
singing under the bay-leaves, were their ac- 
complices and confidants, and kept their se- 
cret. Anita, when she went with her father to 
mass, her golden eyes cast down, and her re- 
bellious hair plaited and wound close to her 
head, looked the most docile and shy of 
maidens ; and the old man was satisfied that 
she obeyed him in letter and spirit. 

“ Nip a folly in the bud and it is done with, 
without fret and fuss,” he muttered to himself, 
complacently, assured of his own shrewd wis- 
dom. 

“ You need only be firm with children to 
bend them just as you choose,” he said aloud, 
with perfect contentment, to the priest of the 
church of San Dominico, who, having seen 
farther than he into the darkened mirror of 
the human soul, gave but a qualified assent to 
the opinion. 


RINALDO. 


*39 

The working days were always full from 
April to November; and when the sun went 
down behind the opposite hills, leaving a dull 
gray haze of heat spread all over the valley, 
Rinaldo was so tired but this midsummer that 
it was only the wings which passion lends 
which could have borne him up the hill-side 
on the chance of hearing the girl's naked 
feet come brushing the dry grasses of the 
foot-path while the night crickets chirped 
shrilly to the moon. It was only a chance, 
and five nights out of seven he would watch 
and wait for nothing, for if her father sat smok- 
ing on the wall, or the women who lodged 
there were loitering and chattering in the road, 
she could not steal away unseen, but was 
forced to sit patiently by the old man’s side 
plaiting her strands of straw till the ninth hour 
tolled from the church clocks down in the vale 
below, and lights were put out and house 
doors bolted. 

These hill-sides in spring and summer even- 
ings have infinite repose and beauty in them. 
They have the solemnity of the mountains and 
the softness of the plains. The curves of the 
many mountain spurs fold and slope tenderly 
into each other in dream-like confusion and 
harmony. Beneath the cloud-like foliage the 


140 


RINALDO . 


nightingales sing and the owl hoots. Until 
the moon rises, swallows hunt circling through 
the shadows, and bats, their mimics, wheel and 
whirl in rapid gyrations which have not the 
swallow’s grace and calm. Distant voices 
echo now and again from hill to hill, coming 
from forms unseen. The scent of pressed 
thyme, of bruised bay, of fallen rose-leaves, is 
everywhere upon the air. Against the lumi- 
nous sky cypress groves and ilex woods rise 
black and solemn, holding the secrets of dead 
gods and murdered men within their depths. 

The months of summer were the busiest of 
the year to Rinaldo. 

In summer all those whose labors are ir- 
regular and gains uncertain are in request 
and can be sure of occupation from sunrise to 
sunset. There is water to be fetched in 
casks for lands which are springless ; there 
is hay to be mown and stacked, and grain to 
be reaped and threshed ; there are errands to 
be run for the idle people who are basking in 
the villa gardens ; there are hedging and 
ditching, carting and marketing ; there are not 
hands enough on any of the farms for the 
field work then, and any man who is hardy 
and useful may be sure to make his day’s 
wage every day and to get his meals as well 


RINALDO. 


141 

from the peasants with whom he works. In 
the summer there can be saved up and laid 
by enough to pay the autumn house rent, and 
something too left in store for the hard mid- 
winter weeks. But this summer his joys and 
his fears troubled his reason ; he set his 
sheaves head upward, which is never done 
in this country ; he left the bung out of his 
water-barrel, so that he arrived with it emp- 
ty, and once when he was sent into the city 
for groceries, he brought salt for rice and 
soap for sugar. But his neighbors knew that 
he was moonstruck with his first love, and 
laughed at him and forgave him. 

The days were long and hot and toilsome, 
but the noonday rest was good when sleeping 
in the shade of a stack or a hedge, and the 
evenings, though his limbs ached and his 
strained sinews throbbed, were filled with 
that delighted expectation which is the lovers’ 
heaven. 

His grandmother saw his distraction with 
a quaking heart ; but she was afraid to say 
much lest it should look as though she were 
selfishly afraid for herself and the child. 
After all, she thought, tliis fever would pass 
like all such midsummer madness ; Matteo 
would never give his daughter to a poor lad ; 


142 


RINALDO . 


no real harm would be done ; such love-crazes 
blow away into air as the golden dandelion 
flower changes into snowy gossamer, and 
melts away upon a puff of wind. 

Rinaldo was sure that his love was re- 
turned, but that knowledge, though sweet, 
could not content him. The brief twilight 
meetings, the hurried words, exchanged in 
fear and trembling, were but meagre food for 
his passion and left him discontented and dis- 
consolate, and he had an uneasy sense of the 
coquetry and capriciousness of Nita’s nature. 
Many a trifle showed it to him, blind though 
he was with the glamour of illusion. The first 
figs which were ripe -on his tree he gathered 
one day, and put in a basket with green 
leaves, and carried to her at twilight. She 
smiled, and set her white teeth in the rosy 
pulp of one, but she said, with a grumbling 
little sigh, “ If it were only the precious stone 
like the glow-worm’s lantern ! ” 

Rinaldo sighed too, more heavily, for he 
would have given his right arm to be able to 
hang her about with all those collars and arm- 
lets of glittering gems of pearl, of coral, of 
silver, of gold, which he saw whenever he 
crossed the goldsmiths’ bridge in the city. 

“ Look you, Naldino,” she said, coaxingly, 


RINALDO. 


143 4 

“ Nerino’s Maria has had such a nice brooch 
from her damo ; a big, big thing, all colors 
and rays and set round with golden flowers ; 
and yet he is poor, quite poor, as you know ; 
he is only a working smith, but he loves her 
— yes — he loves her ! ” 

“ Not as I love you, my Nita,” said Rinal- 
do, stung with jealous hatred of the shoeing 
smith. 

“ Humph ! ” said the maiden, doubtfully, 
and she threw aside the fig which she had 
tasted and felt the green smooth skins of the 
others doubtfully. “ They are not ripe/’ she 
said, slightingly ; “ you may take them back 
to your old sow at home.” 

“ They were the first of the year,” stam- 
mered Rinaldo, “ and I wanted so to bring 
you something.” 

“ One can gather figs as one walks in this 
month anywhere,” she answered, unkindly. 

“ It is not hard unripe windfalls which you 
would bring to me if you were like Maria’s 
Nerino ; it would be something solid and fine 
and worth showing. Maria’s Nerino sold his 
Sunday coat to buy that brooch ! ” 

And she began unkindly to cast fig after 
fig down the grass path, putting a cruel scorn 
of the humble gift into the careless action. 


144 


RINALDO . 


“ Your father said I was a fool to think you 
would be true to me ! ” said Rinaldo, with a 
sharp anguish at his heart. 

“ Did father say that ? ” she asked, with a 
passing smile. 

“ Aye, truly, he did ; he said you would 
want a silk gown on your back and roast 
kid on your platter ! And alas, alas ! my dear, 
I shall never be able to give you aught save 
a cotton print and a dish of beans, and per- 
haps not always even that ! ” 

Anita was mute, rolling to and fro one of 
the despised figs with her foot. 

“ If you were alone we could do well 
enough/’ she murmured. 

“ Alone ! ” 

“ Yes ; as you ought to be. If your grand- 
mother went away and the child, we could do 
well enough ; father would come round then.” 

Rinaldo grew very pale. 

“You know,” he said, in a hushed tone, 
“they are part and parcel of me: if I die 
they must do as they can, poor souls, but 
while I live I am theirs, they are mine. Why 
will you say such cruel things, Nita? You 
do not mean them.” 

“ I do mean them. If you loved me you 
would see as I see, you would have no 


RINALDO. 


145 


thought but of me ; if you loved me you 
would get rid of the old woman and the child, 
then you could come and live with us, and 
take up father’s business after him, and we 
should be as happy as the day is long ; but 
you do not love me ; you are only made of 
words, words, words — and unripe little figs ! ” 

And she kicked the basket over with her 
small bare toes, laughing sulkily, and set the 
fruit which remained in it tumbling among the 
grass. 

“ Oh, Nka ! ” he cried, with a cry of such 
pain that it stopped her in her unkind, trivial 
sport. 

She looked at him, and her golden eyes 
shone with pleasure at her power. She threw 
her arm about his throat and laid her cheek 
against his for a moment. “ I was only jok- 
ing, and father is a fool,” she whispered. 
“ But bring me a brooch like Nerino’s Ma- 
ria’s, for I cannot sleep for the envy of it ; 
and then we will wait like good children for 
what may happen, and the Madonna will be 
kind and smooth the way for us ! ” 

“ If you loved me you would not care for 
gew-gaws ! ” he said, sadly, his whole being 
yielding to the seduction of her caress, but 
his reason chiding and doubting her greed. 


146 


R WALDO. 


“ Bring me them and you shall see ! ” said 
Anita, sliding out of his hold, and flying down 
the hill through the gloaming, as a hare scuds 
under the dark leaves when she hears a dog 
stir, for she heard her father calling from the 
road below. 

Rinaldo stood and looked down on the 
poor, despised green fruit trampled into pulp 
in the grass. A vague, hateful sense of what 
her father had meant in speaking of her came 
upon him, but he thrust its doubts away. All 
women were vain creatures, so all the ballads 
and fables said. She was not more so than 
all the others ; she was young and foolish, 
and wanted to enjoy one of those little tri- 
umphs which are so dear to the female heart. 
He was her damo , though their wooing was 
secret ; to whom should she look for gifts if 
not to himself? And he had never been able 
to give her anything ; not even a blue ribbon 
for her hair, or a silver gilt circlet for her 
ears ! He had thought that she would un- 
derstand and would not mind, knowing as she 
did how things were with him. But it was 
natural that she should despise the fruit and 
think meanly of him. 

Suddenly the girl looked back, returned, 
and laughed in his melancholy and tragic 


RINALDO. 


147 


face ; she paused a moment before him, 
caught up one of the figs, nibbled at it for an 
instant, and then thrust it against his lips. 

“ I have made the sour thing sweet for 
you, my sulky one ! ” she said in his ear ; 
and then darted away through the gloom. 
Rinaldo passionately kissed the fruit where 
her lips had touched it. 

“ If only we could go before the priest ! ” 
he said more than once restlessly. But it was 
impossible. No priest would have dared to 
wed them secretly and without the consent 
of the father and the preface of the civil rite. 

In the old time he had heard tell, that if 
two lovers only kneeled down in church or 
chapel at high mass during the elevation of 
the Host, and joined hands and pledged 
themselves, it made a marriage solemn and 
binding, though secret. But those days were 
over. Love, like all other things, was caught 
and caged and clipped, numbered, registered, 
and licensed, and made to pay taxes to the 
public purse. Yet the idea of that old ro- 
mantic stratagem haunted him. It seemed 
to him as if, were she so to kneel down with 
him at that solemn moment, she would be- 
long to him more completely than she did 
now, would be unable afterward to go back 


148 RINALDO. 

from her promise and plight herself to any 
other. 

He unfolded his daring thought to her, 
and was laughed at for his old-world fancies. 
But he clung to the idea and returned to it 
again and again, whenever they got a few 
stolen minutes in the sultry odorous eves 
among the yellowing grass and the chirping 
crickets. 

“ If only you would meet me in the city 
some Sunday,” he said to her again and again. 

It would be easy. You go sometimes to 
see your Aunt Zaida. We could go into 
some church and kneel down and join hands 
at the elevation of the Host. It would be a 
sacrament.” 

“ It would be nothing at all,” said the girl, 
with contempt. 

“ But I should feel as if you were mine ! ” 
he urged, “ you would feel as if I were yours. 
The saints would know ; that would be 
enough. We cannot go to mass here to- 
gether, but there in the town we might.” 

“ Would you give me a necklace if I did 
it ? ” said Nita, with a saucy smile ; “ a neck- 
lace and pins for my hair ? Blue stones or 
red ; something very good ? ” 

“ I would buy you every stone in the jewel* 


RINALDO. 


149 


lers’ shops ! ” he cried, so dazed with rapture 
that the greed of the condition never struck 
him. 

“ If it bound lovers together in the old time, 
it must bind them so now. To be together 
when the Host is raised, and to kneel down 
hand in hand when the priest blesses the 
people, it is enough to wed us for time and 
eternity ! ” he added, with kindling eyes and 
an awe-stricken voice. 

“ Hush ! ” said Nita, with a flushed face 
and a bashful smile. “ Father forbade us, you 
know, even to think of each other. To be 
sure it would mean nothing, and I could have 
Aunt Zaida with me ; but no — it would never 
do ; it would be wrong ; we should jest at 
the Holy Spirit.” 

“ We should not jest. We should give all 
our lives to each other,” said Rinaldo, with 
passion and earnestness. “ It would make 
me feel as if you were mine, and you would 
not take Tonino’s trinkets after laying your 
hand in my own before the priest.” 

The girl smiled, in her own thoughts 
thinking what silly geese were men. Tonino 
was a sturdy wheelwright of Careggi, who 
paid his court to her on holy days and feast 
days. 


i5o 


RINALDO. 


“ I see no sense in what you want and a 
deal of danger ; father might come to know,” 
she said, stubbornly, “and if I take Tonino’s 
presents, it is no business of yours ; you give 
me nothing yourself, except figs ! ” 

“ You know I have nothing ! ” said Rinaldo, 
stung to the quick. 

“ You must have something sometimes, for 
you pay your rent.” 

“ There is the rent money — yes. We deny 
ourselves sorely to put it by ” 

“But you deny yourself nothing to give me 
pleasure ! ” 

“ I would cut the heart out of my breast to 
give you pleasure ! ” 

“ Pooh ! those are words. Tonino gave 
me these.” 

She shook her pretty head and made some 
little silver bells in her ears tinkel a tiny 
chime. 

“ I will choke him dead like a dog ! ” swore 
Rinaldo. “ How dare he ! — the great slouch- 
ing black-skinned brute ! ” 

“ He is big and brown as a man should be. 
You look like a girl with your pink cheeks 
and your yellow hair.” 

“ You do not love me ! You hate me, or 
you could not torture me so ! ” 


RINALDO. 


151 

“ How can I love you ? You are so mean, 
so cold, so niggardly ; you are always think- 
ing of saving money.” 

Such scenes were renewed again and again ; 
she teased, tormented, caressed, ridiculed, 
flouted, tempted, and excited him until he 
was mere wax in her hands. 

The girl laughed at him, and chided him, 
and said such ideas were rusty and romantic 
follies ; no one did such things as that nowa- 
days. His heart was set on one thing, hers 
on another ; the end of all her coquetries and 
his entreaties was that she agreed to do what 
he wished on one condition. She would meet 
him down in the town, and go into church with 
him during high mass, but he was to buy for 
her whatever she liked out of the shops on 
the jewellers’ bridge. 

The baseness of the bargain never struck 
his mind ; he was too intoxicated with the 
certainty that what appeared to him a sacred 
and inviolate bond would thus be formed be- 
tween them. He knew it would not be a 
legal tie as law was ruled in those days, but 
it had held good as a marriage in times better 
than these, and a true marriage it seemed to 
him that it still would be. 

When she should have knelt down by his 


152 


RINALDO. 


side in the press of the people, and their 
hands should have met, and they should have 
bowed down their heads while the Host was 
raised, they would be indissolubly wedded, so 
he thought ; no jealous dread of the black- 
browed wheelwright would torture him any 
more. They would belong to each other, 
and nothing would be able to part them. 

When she had promised to do this thing, 
Rinaldo was stupefied with joy. He scarcely 
knew what he did or what he said. Men 
joked him, he did not care ; his employers 
scolded him, he did not hear. The long, 
hot, light days went on in a blaze of sun and 
of delight. He worked very hard, he worked 
early and late ; but his heart sung in his 
breast like a bird in pairing-time. 

She could make his hard life sweet for him 
as she had made the fruit by the touch of her 
lips ; but would she do it ? Did her father 
know her better than he did ? Would she 
give her playtime and amorous fancies to 
him, but her solid troth to some other for the 
sake of smart clothes and baked meats ? 

When he went down the hill-side, home, 
the evening had waned into night, the round 
moon was golden among dark clouds, the 
ebon shadows of the fig-tree and of the little 


RINALDO. 


153 


stone house fell back across the white and 
dusty highways. All around was still, ex- 
cept for the chirp of crickets in the dry 
grasses, and the soft hoot of the small moth- 
hunting owls. 

In the moonlight he saw the old woman 
sitting on the bench before the door, and the 
little brown form of Morianinina cast down 
on its stomach beside her in the deep repose 
of slumber. 

“Why is not the child abed?” he said, 
irritably, for the sight of these two who filled 
and over-filled his house were unwelcome to 
him at that moment. 

“ It is hotter in bed than up ; I had not the 
heart to force her ; you know she always 
likes to see you come in before she sleeps,” 
answered Nonna Tessa, surprised to see her 
boy’s face so overcast. 

“ Am I to suit my hours to meet a baby’s 
whims ? ” said Rinaldo, with increasing irrita- 
tion. 

“ No, dear, no,” said his grandmother, 
meekly. “ ’Tis only the child is fond of you, 
and it isn’t worth while to flout any love — ’tis 
a rare thing in this world.” 

The child, roused by their voices, gathered 
herself up on her hands and knees and shook 


54 


RINALDO. 


her rough hair out of her eyes. “ Is 'Naldo 
cross ? ” she said, timidly, to the old woman. 
“ Won’t he carry me in to bed ? ” 

“ Not I, I am not a brat’s nurse ! ” said the 
young man, fiercely, and he strode past the 
bench in at the open door. 

In the middle of the night, when his gran- 
dam and the child both slept, he went to a 
corner of the shed where the hens were kept, 
and the fagots which were used for firing, 
and the tools which had belonged to his 
father, and he turned the wood aside and 
pulled up a brick and took out a broken pip- 
kin. In the little pipkin were some dirty five- 
franc bank-notes, a little silver, and a good 
number of bronze pence. It was the money 
for the rent, fifty francs exactly. 

As long as he could remember anything, 
the money for the rent, in its slow accumu- 
lation, had always been kept out of sight 
there in that corner of the shed under the 
brambles and dry bracken. As a boy he had 
hung on to Tessa’s skirts when she had gone 
to count it over ; and the mystery and mag- 
nitude with which it had been then invested 
in his eyes hung still about that dark corner 
now that for several years it had been his 
own earnings which had been buried there. 


RINALDO . 


155 


and his own hands which had had the right 
to lift them up and count them. 

Looking over his shoulder quickly as 
though he were a thief, he turned the 
hoarded money out onto the battened earth 
of the shed floor. One, two, three, four, 
five, six — he began to count it over as he had 
done nearly every day before to make sure 
that the sum was right. Put all together, 
paper, silver, and bronze, there was the 
money exact ; fifty francs, scraped together 
with hardship and privation and endless toil ; 
bound to be paid to the man in the city be- 
fore the twenty-fourth of that August. The 
season was now July, the tenth of July, and 
the weeks which lie before a rent day are al- 
ways weeks which scamper with cruellest 
haste, and have shorter span in them than 
any other weeks of the year. 

The money was certainly his to take, but if 
he took it or part of it, how could he ever 
make it up again by the end of August, 
barely seven weeks’ time ? He counted it all 
out, and laid it before him on the ground, 
while the startled hens took their heads from 
under their wings and stared with their lit- 
tle round eyes at the oil wick, wondering if it 
were sunrise. 


156 


RINALDO. 


Every piece of the money had, as it were, 
a drop of blood, a tear of labor and sorrow, 
on it ; to put by this, he had gone without a 
pair of boots for feast days, and to set aside 
that he had done without a draught of wa- 
tered wine at noondays ; even every penny 
had a physiognomy and a story of its own : 
to put together all these stout, dirty, defaced 
pieces of metal, how many sacrifices of appe- 
tite and longing had he made ! One coin in 
especial, a silver coin of ancient date, which 
he knew again by a little cross which he had 
scratched on it, had a whole day’s history in 
it for him, for he had gone down into the 
town with an empty stomach and had come 
back fasting, that he might add it to the store 
in the pipkin. How well he remembered the 
day, a soft glad day of the last Lent, with 
narcissus and lilac everywhere, and all the 
town bells ringing ; how his era pty body had 
yearned, and how his dry throat had gasped 
as he passed the wine-shops and the food- 
stalls, gripping hard that silver coin, and car- 
rying it unspent all the way home, sick with 
a day - long hunger, but still so glad and 
proud ! 

“ Dear lad ! Good lad ! ” Tessa had said 
when he had thrown it down on the table 


RINALDO. 


157 


with a laugh, and set his teeth ravenously 
into a dry hunch of bread. 

He sat on the mud floor now, with his oil 
wick beside him, and spread out all the money 
slowly. 

It represented for him and his, half a year 
of safety, of shelter, of peace. If he spent it, 
never again would he be able to gather up 
such a sum by the day it would be needed. 
Out into the dust or mud of the road 
would go the old woman, the young child, 
the familiar sticks of furniture, the rough 
beds on which they slept the heavy slumber 
which follows on toil. 

All the respect and self-respect which go 
with a home, inviolate and unshared, would 
be gone ; there would be nothing for the fut- 
ure but the noise and shame of a hired lodg- 
ing. 

And it was not even wholly and solely his 
own. Amid it, part of it, was the money 
his grandmother got for the eggs, and by the 
bees ; nay, there was even one bright half- 
franc which had been given to the child by a 
stranger for some field flowers, and which she 
had brought to them in glee and pride, cry- 
ing delightedly, “ Morianinina, too, can help 
to pay the rent.” 


158 


RINALDO. 


No. It was not his to take. And yet Ri- 
naldo, with the first blush of shame which had 
ever dyed his cheeks red, swept the various 
moneys all together into his left palm with a 
hurried action, slid his hand into his trousers 
pocket, and holding the pocket tightly with 
a nervous grip, kicked back the fagots and 
branches over the now empty hole, and blow- 
ing out his light, went noiselessly out of the 
shed and up to the loft where he slept. 

At break of day he was out of the house. 

It was a feast day, that of the Purification. 
Some bells were ringing for matins, but the 
chimes came from the fir-woods above Ma- 
jiano ; and no other as yet replied to them. 
The air was clear as glass and cold, with that 
delicious coldness of summer dawns in Italy. 
No one was stirring, the hills were bathed in 
cloud, the plain far below was hidden in va- 
por. Rinaldo stood and looked at the famil- 
iar outlines of the landscape with a strange, 
vague fear upon him ; he felt as if he had 
committed a crime. The old woman and the 
little child were lying asleep. He felt as if he 
had cut their throats in their slumber. 

“ It is my own, it is my own,” he kept 
saying, with his hand tightly clenched on the 
money. But he could not persuade himself 


RINALDO. 


159 


that it was truly his, since it had been earned 
by mutual toil. It had had a common pur- 
pose. It was a common property, theirs as 
much as his. He felt as if the little silver 
piece which had belonged to the child burned 
his fingers as they closed on his pocket where 
the coin lay. 

“ What folly ! ” he said angrily to himself. 
“ It is all mine; I keep the child and I keep 
granny. Any trifle they may make comes to 
me by right. It is all mine.” 

But although he said so, the sophistry did 
not satisfy him. 

He was by nature essentially honest, and 
he knew that, though the law could not have 
touched him for it, he had done a dishonest 
thing. But though he repented, he did not 
atone. The money weighed like lead upon 
him, but he did not think once of turning 
back to put it again in its hiding place. He 
could not bear to think at all. The spectre 
of the August day to come, when the rent 
should be due, and there would be no money 
forthcoming to pay it, pursued him like his 
shadow as he ran down the road which he 
knew so well that he could have travelled it 
blindfolded. 

There was no reason why he should go so 


i6o 


RINALDO. 


early into the town, but he felt that he could 
not meet Nonna Tessa’s eyes, nor even bear 
to see the little brown face of Morianinina 
lifted to his own. It was still earliest morning, 
and the streets were empty, and the houses 
closed, when he reached the jewellers’ bridge, 
and sunrise, rosy and radiant, was shedding 
its light over the reaches of the river ; the 
little shops on the bridge were unopened, and 
their green wooden shutters covered them 
like so many closed Noah’s Ark boxes. He 
sat down on the parapet under the arches, 
his hand all the while on the money, his heart 
heavy with shame and yet beating wildly like a 
caged bird’s wings with longingand with hope. 

He knew the city well, having come thither 
often ; and yet it seemed strange to him and 
hostile ; its silence oppressed him ; it seemed 
like a city of the dead; he had eaten nothing, 
but he hid not think of that ; he thought only 
of the coming of x^nita. 

Slowly the light broadened on the river, and 
the blue smoke rose from the chimneys, and 
the windows and doors of houses opened, and 
mules and horses with their carts came over 
the roadway, and itinerant sellers carrying 
their wares screamed to the housewives to 
come down and buy. All the morning life of 


RINALDO. l6l 

the town awoke and the many bells pealed 
from spire and tower, seeming to call to each 
other like friend to friend. 

Amid all the noise and stir and confusion 
which seemed to him so harsh, after the sweet 
melodies of his own bells, Rinaldo sat immov- 
able under the arches waiting for the jewel- 
lers’ and silversmiths’ shops to open. At last, 
one by one, the dusky shutters were taken 
down, and the little queer square dens with all 
their treasures close-packed and their back 
windows like port-holes showing glimpses of 
the water, were opened to the passers-by. 
Rinaldo’s eyes felt dazzled at all that glitter 
and glisten of gold and silver, with the blue of 
turquoises, and the pale rose of coral, and the 
jewels of reliquaries and chalices shining there 
in the full sunshine of the morning within 
those little dusky cabins. The shops were to 
stand open until noon, and the money was in 
his breast pocket. Would she never come ? 
Would she fail him after all? His gaze 
strained to see her through the crowd. He 
sat staring at the southern entrance of the 
bridge by which she was sure to come. 

“ She cannot doubt that I love her now ? ” 
he thought, while his pulses beat, and his 
ears grew full of the noise around and his con* 


RItfALDO. 


162 

science stirred in him fitfully, restless yet slug- 
gish, like a drugged watch-dog. 

At last he saw her ; the sun shining in her 
amber-like eyes, a black veil thrown about 
her head, a smile playing upon her rosy 
mouth. She looked from right to left ; much 
at the jewellers’ windows, a little at the loiter- 
ing people, not at all at Rinaldo. 

“ Nita ! ” he cried with a shout of joy, 
which drew all eyes upon him ; then she saw 
him and came up to him quickly. 

“ You have the money? ” she asked. 

His heart fell. 

“ Yes,” he said, moodily; “ yes, I have 
brought it all. But ” 

“ How much is it ? ” 

“ Fifty francs. But ” 

“ It is so little, Aunt Zaida ! ” said Nita, with 
vexation, turning to the little dirty old woman 
who accompanied her. 

“ It is all I have on earth. A king could 
not give more than his all ! ” said Rinaldo, 
piteously. 

She shrugged her shoulders, and turned 
from him to gaze at one of the windows. 

“You had best make haste to buy, or the 
young man’s mood may change,” whispered 
the woman whom she called her aunt 


RINALDO. 


163 


“ I make his moods as I please,” said Ani- 
ta, pettishly. “ Oh, the beautiful, beautiful 
things ! Look at these corals, and those big 
red stones, and these blue ones, and that 
necklace and cross in filigree ! Oh, dear, oh, 
dear ! We can get nothing worth getting for 
fifty francs. If you had only your pockets 
full of gold, ’Naldino ! ” 

“ We shall miss the first mass,” murmured 
Rinaldo, impatiently ; his thoughts were far 
away from the jewellers’ windows. 

“ Pooh-pooh ! ” said Nita, scornfully, “ there 
is more than one mass in a morning. Let 
us go in ; say not a word, ’Naldo, leave Aunt 
Zaida and me to bargain.” 

Rinaldo followed them in and out of shop 
after shop, standing behind them while they 
admired and expatiated, wondered and cheap- 
ened, handled this and tried on that, taxing 
the patience of the sellers severely, and strain- 
ing that of Rinaldo almost to bursting. At 
last the momentous choice was made ; tired 
out with her own hesitations, and broken- 
hearted because she could not buy all she 
saw, she decided at last on a set of coral, the 
thing of the most color which she could find 
come within her price. It consisted of ear- 


RINALDO. 


164 

rings, hair-pins, and a necklace, all of red coral 
in silver-gilt filigree. 

“ It costs seventy francs the set,” she said 
to her lover. “ Pay for it. Aunt has beaten 
them down from a hundred and twenty.” 

“ But I have only fifty francs ! ” he mut- 
tered in sore distress, feeling the seller’s eyes 
upon him. 

“ Give your watch in ; they will take it I 
think,” said Anita, and she plucked out of his 
waistbelt an old silver watch. It had been his 
father’s, and in direst stress and strait of pov- 
erty he and Nonna Tessa had never dreamed 
of parting with it. They had often gone sup- 
perless to bed, but the old watch had always 
ticked the night hours by their bed. 

“ The watch ! Oh, not the watch, Nita ! ” 
he stammered, piteously. “ I can never go 
home to granny if I have lost the watch.” 

“ Tell her it was stolen in the streets,” said 
Anita, and she handed the poor old silver case 
to her aunt while the Jew seller waited with 
the set of corals in his hands. 

In a few moments more the watch was test- 
ed, weighed, priced, and gone. Rinaldo had 
paid away also the fifty francs, and the set of 
coral was in the possession of the Procaccio’s 
daughter. 


RtNALDO . 


“ It is a poor thing compared to all the jew- 
els,” she thought, discontentedly; ‘'but at 
least it is much finer than Nerino’s Maria’s 
brooch.” 

The jeweller was meanwhile looking at the 
youth who had paid for it, with an amused 
and compassionate smile. 

Rinaldo was confused and bewildered. He 
scarcely knew what he said, and the sudden 
loss of his poor old friend, the watch, stunned 
him. 

“ Let us get to church,” he murmured pite- 
ously in Nita’s ear. “ Santo Spirito is the 
nearest church, I think. Come, come, quick, 
for heaven’s sake.” 

“ Mass is over,” said Nita, coolly, “and we 
can go to church well enough at home.” 

“ But you said 

“Never mind what I said. What I say 
now is that I must get home, or father will be 
there before me.” 

“ But you promised ” 

“ No woman is bound by a mere promise,” 
replied Nita, who was putting on the coral 
before a little bit of mirror in the inner den of 
the shop. 

“ Is coral becoming to fair folks ? ” she asked 
doubtfully of the old Jew who had sold it 


1 66 


klMLDO. 


to her. He rubbed his hands and shook his 
head with a smile. 

“You should have chosen turquoises; 
turquoises suit red blondes like you, my 
dear.” 

“ But we have only such a little money ! ” 
said Anita, with a pouting discontent as. she 
stuck one of the coral pins in her auburn 
braids. Rinaldo, heedless of the dealer’s pres- 
ence, and of the curious eyes of the people 
crowding round the doorway, seized her by 
the arm with unconscious violence. 

“Will you come to the church or not? 
Have you brought me here on a fool’s er- 
rand ? ” 

Nita laughed, her pretty red lips, as bright 
as the coral, curling gayly up at the corners, 
and her light eyes glittering with amusement 
and anger. 

“ On a fool’s errand ? Eh ! it is only fools 
who will trot about on those errands ! High 
mass is over by now, and I am in haste to 
be home. I will wear your corals — oh, yes, 
that I will — at least, until somebody gives me 
something better ! ” 

And she laughed saucily and long, en- 
couraged by her aunt’s approving titter, and 
the jeweller’s cunning smile, and the grins on 


RINALDO. 1 67 

the faces of the passers-by who had paused 
before the door. 

The face of Rinaldo grew red as fire, and 
then gray and pale under its sunny brown. 
The pavement and the river water, and the 
jewels and the ornaments, and the blue sky 
above them, were all blent in one swirl and 
eddy of light before his eyes, and the heat in 
his brain scorched him like hot iron. 

“ You have cheated me ! ” he shouted, his 
voice shrill as the scream of a wounded horse. 
“ You have cheated me ! You have got all 
I had upon earth and you play me false ! ” 

The shallow soul of the girl was startled 
into a sudden fear, but she was bold and 
cruel, and proud of her power. She set her 
hands on her hips, and stood in the doorway 
of the shop, and laughed impudently in his 
face. 

“ All you had ! A fine story to marry up- 
on ! You are a pretty boy, ’Naldino, but 
you are a goose. Father is right. Trystings 
and kissings are nice sugared cakes, but in 
marriage one wants roast kid and silk gowns. 
When I do go to church, my lad, it won’t be 
for a set of coral ! ” 

Then she drew her veil closer about her 
head and nudged her aunt, and nodded to 


68 


RINALDO. 


the old Jew salesman, and was about to el- 
bow her way through the little crowd which 
was listening to her and egging her on be- 
cause she was so pretty, and saucy, and 
amused them. But Rinaldo stood between 
her and them. He had thrown his hat on 
the stones, his eyes blazed like flame, his 
teeth chattered with rage, he breathed hardly 
and very loud. 

“ Look at her, ye townsfolk ! ” he shouted. 
“ A lass of the hills, as simple as a sheep, as 
coaxing as a cat, all wiles and winningness 
and softness ! She has taken my all, and she 
promised to go before the priest with me; 
and now she has got what she wants, she 
jeers and flouts me ! Body of Christ ! the 
street-walker in your lanes is an honester 
soul than she ! She shall never live to grin 
and to greet in another man’s face and fool 
him as she has fooled .me. Ah ! cursed red 
lips which are like a rose ! ” 

And he struck her on the mouth violently, 
so that she fell backward on the floor of the 
jewellers shop, and leaping on her, he 
snatched the coral off her throat, her hair, her 
arms, and struck her with it in her eyes, on 
her cheeks, on her lips, in furious ceaseless 
blows, which made her face a bruised mass 


RINALDO. 169 

of bleeding flesh, smashed and shapeless like 
the broken coral toys. 

The bystanders shrieked for help, but no 
one dared venture within, to touch or stop 
him. His passion spent itself in that one mad 
and brutal act ; he gave a scornful kick with 
his foot to her prostrate body, and spurned 
it from his path, then he walked out of the 
shop, his head flung back, his nostrils di- 
lated, his breast heaving in a tumult of rage 
and remorse. 

No one dared to put a hand on him. He 
had done what it was his right to do, and 
the sympathies of the populace were with 
him. “ Women change a good youth into a 
mad devil full many a time/’ said a graybeard 
among the crowd, as Rinaldo, looking neither 
to right nor left, thrust the people aside and 
passed on over the bridge. 

When the guards came up it was too late ; 
he had mingled with the multitude pouring 
out from the churches, and was lost to sight 
in the dark and tortuous streets of the old 
’Oltrarno. They could only lift up the pros- 
trate form of the girl and carry it to the near- 
est hospital. Her life was in no danger, but 
her beauty was ruined forever. 

All that day Nonna Tessa watched for him 


RINALDO. 


170 

at home. When she had gone to let out her 
hens at sunrise, she had seen the disordered 
state of the fagots and fern, and had found 
the hole disturbed and the money vanished. 

“ The lad has taken it to throw away on 
the wench,” she said to herself. 

Rinaldo had gone without a word to her, 
and gone down into the town. When the 
day had drawn to a close and the sun set, 
some gossips came up the hill breathless, and 
told her the story as they had heard it. 

" They have come for Matteo,” they said, 
when the tale was done ; “ he has gone down 
to the town like one mad. It seems your 
lad bought a power of goods, and then broke 
them on the girl’s head ; it is a bad job ; he 
is in hiding. Who would ever have thought 
it of him, such a docile, good-humored, gentle 
youth ! ” 

Nonna Tessa grew rigid as though she 
were made of stone, but she went on with 
her spinning. 

" The boy is a good boy,” she said, sim- 
ply ; “ if he have done wrong he hath been 
provoked.” 

More than that the gossips could not ex- 
tort from her, and when they questioned her 
as to what money he could have had, she an- 


RWALDQ* 


tfl 

swered merely that he had saved some ; that 
he would never have taken what was not his 
own. 

For the old are more loyal than are the 
young. 

Night fell, and she hung a lantern in the 
open door as a sign that she was awake and 
awaiting him. She did not undress or go to 
bed, and the child slept on the floor, waking 
fitfully and crying out that people were hurt- 
ing ’Naldino. 

Long hours passed, sultry hours of a moon- 
less summer night ; there was no sound but 
from the owls on the wing, and now and then 
the scream of a mouse caught by one of them. 
The hills lay fold on fold in the dark, one 
with another, the air was dry and scented 
with the aroma of the pines up above on the 
crest of Majaino. 

Other persons came up the hill-side bearing 
the same tale. Everyone loves to tell bad 
news. 

The old woman listened in frozen calm. “ I 
will hear my boy’s own story before I be- 
lieve,” she said, stubbornly, and they could not 
get anything else from her, and, tired, the 
other women went away to the house of Mat- 
teo, where, weeping and chattering and vie- 


172 


RMALDO . 


ing with each other in the terrors and horrors 
of the versions they gave, all the lodgers and 
tenants were screaming and gesticulating to- 
gether. Matteo stayed down in the town. 

Nonna Tessa sat on at her door and span ; 
but her hands shook and the flax shook in 
them. The child, aware that there was some- 
thing wrong, but too young to understand 
what it was, sat quiet at her feet, playing 
sadly with blades of grass and little pebbles 
and the beetles which crept among them. 

The old woman as the day wore away 
hung her soup-pot over a fire of sticks, and 
cut some slices from a stale loaf ; but she fed 
the child, she could not eat herself. Her 
tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, her 
legs were cold as in winter and dragged 
heavily along ; the suspense, the uncertainty 
tortured her, but she did not dare to leave 
the cottage and go out to try and hear the 
truth, for Rinaldo might come here in her 
absence. 

“ If he have done wrong he will come to 
me,” she thought, and in her innermost soul, 
though she would not have admitted it to any 
living creature, she had little doubt that the 
tale was true, since the money for the rent 
was gone. 


RINALDO. 


173 


Twilight fell and no one came near her any 
more. All the interest, all the sympathy, of 
the dwellers on the hill-side were with the 
Procaccio and his daughter. The old woman 
folded her trembling hands in her lap and 
tried to mutter her Aves, but the familiar 
words would not come to her ; she could not 
think of them. She could only think of her boy. 

“ If I and the child had not burdened him, 
perhaps this would not have been,” she 
thought, with self-torturing remorse. 

If he should be dead ? If he should have 
killed himself in despair and dread of what 
he had done ? 

She sat on the bench by the wall and 
strained her eyes into the gloom. A polecat 
stole across the path ; the over-ripe figs 
dropped with a soft thud upon the grass ; the 
great clouds coursed across the sky ; all was 
still — as still as death. Perhaps, had he been 
unburdened and alone, he would have led his 
life, jocund and free, and been mated where he 
had wished. Her long and many years had 
been spent in toil, in sacrifice, in pain, in un- 
selfish care of others, and what had they 
brought to her? Nothing. 

“ It has all been of no good,” she thought, 
while her chin dropped on her chest, and the 


174 


RINALDO . 


fatigue of physical exertion dulled her anxious 
mind and lulled it into a momentary stupor 
of sleep. 

She awoke abruptly, terrified and trembling 
from head to foot. “ Did you speak, lad ? ” 
she cried, as she stared into the darkness 
around her. 

A human shadow came out of the shadows 
of the bushes, and ran across the piece of 
sward, and knelt down before her. 

“ I took the money, and I bought her 
corals, and she had promised to go before the 
priest with me, and she cheated me and 
flouted me, and I fell on her and no man will 
praise her beauty any more ; I have sinned, 
I am vile ; I have robbed you and the child. 
Oh, granny, granny, curse me and let me die \ 
I was ready to die ; I had got down in the 
bed of the river, I had waded in waist deep, 
and the mud and the sand were sucking at 
me, drawing me down and down — and then 
all in a moment I saw your face, and I heard 
your voice, and I felt that I must just see you 
once more to say to you, ‘ I am sorry, I am 
sorry for you.’ ” 

Then he laid his head on her knees and 
burst out sobbing as he had used to sob 
when a child, when he had done wrong, had 


RINALDO. 


175 


broken a pitcher, or torn his shirt, or played 
truant from school on a summer day. As she 
had done then, she did now ; she laid her 
hands on his bowed head and touched his 
sunny curls tenderly. 

“ You are in a cruel strait, my lad,” she 
said, gently. “ Passion has led you wide 
astray. The lass was not worth nor the gift 
nor the blow. But it was good of you to 
think of me ” 

Her voice was choked in her throat ; he 
did not speak or move ; he knelt there with 
his head bowed down on her knees like a 
little chidden child. She sat still and mute, 
thinking, and her eyes peered through the 
darkness to try and see where her old home 
lay in the hollow under the olives. 

“ They will be after you, dear,” she said 
slowly at last. “You must not stay here. 
They will take you like a netted quail. You 
must go.” 

“ Go ! And leave you ? It is because I can- 
not bear to leave you that I did not kill myself 
there in the river.” 

“You must go,” she repeated. “Wait. 
Let me think.” 

She stood up, and he sat down in the dust 
at her feet, like a child ; his back was bowed, 


176 


RINALDO. 


his head hung down, his whole attitude was 
broken-hearted and full of despair ; he had 
eaten nothing since the previous night : all 
the day he had skulked and hidden timidly in 
the lanes of the town and under the hedges of 
the outskirts. Nonna Tessa stood above him 
in the dark, her face set and drawn, her eyes 
staring. 

“ You must go,” she repeated ; “ you must 

g°-” 

That was all that was clear to her ; he must 
go before the hand of the law could seize him 
for what he had done. Suddenly, with hands 
strong as in youth, she dragged him up from 
the ground and pushed him indoors. 

“ Break your fast, my child ; you are weak 
from hunger and shame,” she said, as she 
poured out some soup in an earthen pan and 
broke bread before him. 

‘‘I cannot; I choke!” he said, faintly; 
but she persisted, and she fed him spoonful 
by spoonful, as she had done when he had 
been in his infancy, until, ashamed, he took 
the spoon from her and ate. 

“ I am a miserable brute ! ” he murmured 
as the tears rolled down his cheek. 

“ You did wrong,” she said, gravely, “but 
the woman tempted you.” 


RINALDO. 


1 77 


Then she went into the inner room, and 
busied herself putting together in a bundle the 
little linen and the few clothes he possessed, 
and she made ready a flask of poor wine 
which was kept for feast days, a goat’s-milk 
cheese, and a loaf. These she brought out 
and laid on the table before him, and counted 
down beside them a few silver and bronze 
pieces. 

“ These I have had saved for years ; I did 
not tell you, for I kept them for a worse day 
than any we have known. Take them and 
make your way into the Mugello ; go to my 
brother Claudio, at the saw-mill of Ragona, 
beyond Camaldoli ; it is forty years since he 
saw me, but he will not have forgotten ; he 
will shelter you, and give you work; stay 
there till your name is forgotten/’ 

Rinaldo threw his hair out of his eyes and 
stared at her by the dim light of the lamp. 

“And you? how will you live and the 
child ? ” 

“ How do the birds live with every man’s 
hand against them ? Think not of me, but go.” 

He thrust back the money with a passionate 
gesture. 

“ I have robbed you already. Not again, 
not again.” 


178 


RINALDO. 


She laid her hands on his shoulders, and 
looked long into his eyes. 

“ You did not rob me. You took what was 
your own. Besides, you were mad and knew 
not what you did. Go, my lad, lose no more 
time. Will it be better for me and the child if 
you stand in the felon’s dock ? And Matteo 
will have no mercy.” 

The little girl who was asleep on the floor 
awoke, and seeing him there, sprang to her 
feet with a cry of joy. 

“ ’Naldino ! ” she murmured, as she clung to 
his knees, “ I saved some bilberries for you 
on a big leaf, and you never came home all 
day ! ” 

Rinaldo lifted her up in his arms and his 
tears fell on her little brown head. 

“ Come with me, both of you,” he said, with 
a sob. “Then perhaps I shall have courage.” 

“No, dear, we have been a clog to you all 
your days,” said Tessa. “ Let us do as 
we can. Go you, and the Madonna be with 
you.” 

“ I will not go alone,” said Rinaldo. 

He sighed bitterly, and threw his arms up- 
ward in a wild, despairing gesture. 

“ If I go alone I shall kill myself. Oh, how 
I loved her ! And I have beaten the beauty 


RINALDO. 


1 79 


out of her, and night and day, on earth and in 
hell, I shall only see her face ! ” 

His grandmother looked at him and took up 
the lamp from the table. 

“ We will go together,” she said. “ It does 
not matter where my bones be laid.” 

In half an hour they left the little house and 
closed the door and laid the key on the step. 
The old woman paused a moment and gazed 
at the opposite hills, dim and vague in the 
darkness and starlight. She was trying to see 
where her old home stood which she had 
loved so well. 

A southwest wind was blowing, and it 
blew to her the smell of its pine-trees, and of 
its briar roses. She made the sign of the 
cross and blessed the place. 

“ When I die, if you can, bring me back,” 
she said. It was her only hint of lament. 

“Where are we going?” asked the little 
child, drowsily. 

“ God knows,” said Nonna Tessa. 

Rinaldo said, “ Where we shall be to- 
gether.” 

Then the three shadows passed upward 
into the darkness of the higher trees, shun- 
ning the roads which others might traverse. 

“ When I am dead, bring me back hither,” 


180 rinAldo. 

said the old woman once more. And it 
seemed to her that she was dead already. 

The hearth was cold, the door was shut, 
the house was empty. Life was over for her, 
as much as though the deal lid of her coffin 
had been nailed down upon her. 

But her boy wanted her ; she set her face 
bravely northward, and looked back no more. 

And the three shadows went on together, 
along the side of the hill ; and the darkness 
covered them, and their place knew them no 
more. 


THE HALT 



1 
























































































































































THE HALT. 


She would not go to bed lest she should 
oversleep herself and fail to wake in time. 

Every morning of her life she did awake at 
cock-crow and arise, but she was afraid this 
night that she might lie too long. 

“ Will you not come ? ” she said to her hus- 
band for the hundredth time ; and he re- 
plied : 

“ Gua ! Not I. The lad is a good lad, but 
not worth a tramp of twenty miles across the 
hills, when grain is uncut and storms are nigh, 
as the astrologers do say.” And he would 
not move off his land ; he was a peaceable, 
good soul, hard-working, and penurious and 
uncomplaining ; but his blood was slow and 
his heart half asleep from over-toil and narrow- 
ness of means. He could not see why he 
should lose a day's work and take a tramp to 
see a boy he had begotten pass by in a cloud 
of dust. Those crazes were for the women 


THE HALT. 


184 

folk, he said, with the good-humored, pitying 
smile of his superior manhood. 

“ 'Tis silly of you to go, sposa,” he said to 
his helpmeet ; but she had set her soul on go- 
ing. The troops were encamped fifty miles 
off in the Volterra country, and in their march- 
ings and counter-marchings they would pass 
through a defile known as the Belva, which 
was within her reach, and there would halt at 
noonday and eat their noonday meal ; so at 
least it was said, and she was bent on going 
thither to see them if they came. For her 
boy was among them, her eldest born, her 
auburn - haired, blue - eyed, gentle, comely 
Daniello, whom she had not seen since he had 
gone away with other conscripts, eighteen 
months before, from the village in the valley 
which was his communal centre. Once or 
twice a few scrawled words on a dirty sheet 
of paper had come from the post to her, and 
she had carried it to the priest, and he had 
read it and told out of it that her boy was well, 
and hoped it found her so likewise. That 
was all the news that she had had in a year 
and a half of her eldest son, and then her 
man wondered that she wished to go over 
the hills to see the troops at their halting- 
place ! 


THE HALT. 1 85 

“A father’s a poor creature,” she said, with 
scorn. 

She and he were very small peasants ; 
their little farm was meagre and stony. Their 
master was a hard man ; their lot was harsh, 
but they bore with it cheerfully ; they had 
health and strength, and their children were 
docile, laborious, and healthy always, al- 
though they ate but rye bread with a little 
oil and a few beans, and drank nothing but 
brook water. The fine, clear mountain air 
fed them, as it fed the hill hare and the wild 
partridge. Their house was a stone cabin 
on the edge of a moor, and a few pines shel- 
tered it from the north, and its few fields 
sloped southward. All around them was a 
war-scarred, desolate-looking, treeless, vol- 
canic country, where whole nations lay 
buried, and little cities crouched in little 
hollows like a child’s toys in a giant’s 
palm. 

Their lives were pinched and starved, and 
they had much to do to hold their bodies 
and souls together in bad years ; but they 
were an affectionate people, and cheerful of 
nature, and their mother was the most cheer- 
ful of all. “ If only they would not take 
away the lads,” she said ; she would have 


THE HALT. 


1 86 

asked nothing more of the Madonna or the 
State than this : only to leave the lads. 

A pedlar coming on his rounds had told 
them that the troops would pass by quite 
near to her on their march, only sixteen miles 
off as the falcon flew, and she knew that her 
boy’s regiment would be with them. “ How 
will you tell him from the others in all that 
pother?” said her husband; and she had 
laughed. Not know her own son out of five 
hundred — five thousand — five million ! 

It is impossible for those who can bridge 
distance with all the resources of culture and 
science to understand the dead darkness, the 
utter blank which absence is to the poor and 
the ignorant. It is like death : no message 
comes from it, no ray of light shines through 
its unbroken gloom. The boy had gone ; 
they said he would return, but she knew not 
when nor why nor how. The State had got 
him ; something impalpable, immutable, in- 
comprehensible ; she knew no more. 

When Ruffo, the hawker, passing by on his 
bi-annual visit with his pack of needles, and 
pins, and tapes, and other necessaries, had 
said to her : “ The troops are down there ; 
aye, a fine show : horse, foot, and gunners ; 
I saw your ’Neillo in the camp ; he told me 


THE HALT. 


18/ 

to tell you he and his regiment would go 
through the Belva at noonday to-morrow, 
and most like halt there. ‘ Tell mother to 
come,’ says the lad. ‘ Lord sakes, lad,’ 
says I, ‘ 'tis an endless twenty-mile tramp 
and more, and your mother is none so young 
as she was ; and ’tis reaping time, as you 
know well.’ But ’Neillo, he only laughs, 
and he says, 'Tell mother to come/ So I 
tell ye. But ’tis not my fault if you go.” 
Over her dark, lean face a flash of great 
eagerness and joy had passed, but she had 
gone on with her work, which was stacking 
beans. 

“ I do not tell you to go,” said the pedlar. 
"Just as like as not they won't march 
through the Belva. Those generals always 
change their minds at the last minute. But 
that was what the lad said to me. ‘Tell 
mother to come,’ says he. ‘ We go through 
the Belva/ ” 

“ How looks he ? ” she asked. 

“ Aye, aye ; a bit thin, but well ; I am not 
saying he does not look well.” 

She shot a quick glance at him from be- 
neath her gray brows. 

“ He was never over-strong,” she said, 
under her breath. “ When children have 


18 & 


The HALT. 


never enough in their bellies they cannot 
grow up strong men.” 

“ Lads would be always pecking if one let 
them/’ he rejoined. “ He did not complain 
to me ; not a word.” 

“’Neillo was never one to complain,” said 
the woman. 

And she would not lie down lest she 
should by any chance oversleep herself, but 
kept walking to and fro, plaiting her strands 
of straw while the children and the good- 
man slept. 

There is but little night in the middle of 
the month of July, and when the moon is at 
the full there seems no night at all, but only 
a more ethereal and more luminous day. 

At four o’clock she lifted the latch of the 
house-door and went out, leaving the bread 
and the weak cold coffee ready for them to 
break their fast. The eldest girl would heat 
up the coffee in its rude tin pot, and they 
would have a sup or two each to moisten 
their dry rye-crusts. 

It was day already ; the broken barren 
hills which stretched around her home were 
touched with soft roselight ; a deep sense of 
coolness and of rest lay like a benediction on 
the noiseless scene ; the stone slopes, so 


THE HALT. 


189 


harsh and cheerless at other hours, were in 
this hour softened and spiritualized into 
beauty ; clouds floated in their hollows, and 
white mists like inland seas stretched between 
the high hill-tops. 

She was a tall, gaunt woman, only thirty- 
eight years old by age, but twice that age in 
appearance. Her hair was gray and thick, 
her skin brown and deeply lined ; her profile 
had the straight classic lines. She had been 
handsome in her youth, but that was all of 
beauty that remained to her ; her bosom was 
wrinkled and fallen, her teeth were few and 
rotten, her cheeks were hollow. Scorching 
summers, freezing winters, the soaking 
storms of spring, and the mountain winds of 
autumn, had all played with her as with a 
loosened leaf, and buffeted her about and 
beat her out of womanhood. She toiled hard 
all through the year, hoeing, weeding, cutting 
grass, carrying wood and water, ploughing 
behind the little heifer up and down the steep 
and stony fields. The silence and the soli- 
tude around were so familiar to her that they 
had no terrors ; she had lived all her life 
among these stony hills, this alternation of 
bare slate and granite with friable tufa and 
petrified lava mounds. She knew that to the 


190 


THE HALT. 


west lay the sea, and to the east were the 
fertile and radiant Tuscan plains; but with 
her own eyes she had never seen aught ex- 
cept her native hills, never known aught ex- 
cept the scanty nourishment for man and 
beast which they grudgingly yield, and the 
perpetual isolation to which those who dwell 
amidst them are condemned. 

She had a piece of bread in her pocket, 
and she knew that there were water-springs 
here and there in the rocks ; she had her 
sickle swinging at her side ; she meant to cut 
grass if she found any, and bring it in a bun- 
dle on her shoulders on her return journey 
home. She was in the habit of never losing 
a moment nor neglecting a chance. She had 
put on her one better gown, a brown woollen 
skirt with a yellow bodice, and over it she 
had a great coarse cotton apron of a faded 
blue. She had nothing on her head, and her 
sleeves were rolled up to the elbow ; she car- 
ried her shoes in her hand, not wishing to 
spoil them by so much walking, but meaning 
to wear them when she should enter the Bel- 
va gorge so as to do honor to her boy. She 
bought a pair once in ten years ; strong 
leather things, with wooden soles, which 
were only worn on rare occasions. She had 


THE HALT. 


191 

put also in her capacious pocket a little round 
cheese and a loaf of wheaten bread to give 
her son. She would willingly have brought 
wine also, but wine was never seen on those 
hill-tops, except in the priest’s chalice at the 
little church where the stone-pines stood in a 
hollow of the rocks. 

She walked on at the level pace of one 
used to cover ground quickly and evenly. 
The air was cool, the breeze blew from the 
sea ; the lovely lights of sunrise chased the 
shadows of the dawn. Her mind was busy 
with her boy, travelling over all his short, 
uneventful life. She thought of him as he 
had lain at her breast a little conical bundle 
of swaddling-clothes, with only his small 
brown hands and his eager, red, wet mouth 
free. She thought of him at ten months old, 
escaping from her arms to totter across the 
stones before the door for the first time alone 
upon his feet. She remembered one day 
when he had fallen from a plum-tree and 
twisted his ankle, and lay in her lap sobbing 
and rubbing his curly head against her arm. 
Then there was the day he took his first com- 
munion, such a slim, bright-eyed, well-built 
little man, though small and thin ; for there 
was scanty food to divide among so many, 


192 


THE HALT. 


and the children were always hungry. She 
had cut up her only good cotton gown to 
make him a shirt and breeches for that day ; 
it had been a day in midsummer ; the sun had 
shone on his auburn head as he went up over 
the rugged pavement of the church, so dark 
even at noon, except where the strong hot 
rays shot through the clefts of the narrow 
windows. He had been a good lad always, 
docile and active and chaste, kind to the little 
ones, obedient to his parents, and content 
with his lot. Then the State had caught him 
up out of her hand, and she had ceased to 
know anything of him ; a high blank wall 
had been built up between her and him ; he 
had been taken far away, and she had had 
nothing left to do except to kneel down on 
the benches before the little picture of the 
Madonna and pray for him. Twenty-one 
years he had been hers, paid for by her pain, 
her labor, her privation, her sacrifice ; and 
then all in a moment he had become nothing 
to her, he had been taken by the hand of the 
State. She had never understood it nor for- 
given it. They might say what they would, it 
was cruel, it was wicked, it was accursed. He 
was hers, and they dragged him away and set 
the blankness of darkness between him and her. 


THE HALT . 


193 


But at last, perhaps, she would see him. 
He had bidden the pedlar ask her to come. 
He had not forgotten. If it were only to see 
him go by in the scorch and sweat of the 
march, it was enough to live for, enough to 
walk to the end of the world for ; and should 
there be a halt, a bivouac, as they said, she 
would clasp him in her arms and hear his 
voice, and see him eat of her bread and her 
cheese, and wipe the dust off his face as if he 
were a child once more. “ Tell mother to 
come to the Belva,” so he had said. Dear lad, 
dear lad ! He had not forgotten her, nor the 
way the country lay among the rocks about 
his home. 

The light widened and brightened and be- 
came full day. 

The air grew warm. The landscape, losing 
the rosy lights and silvery shadows of the ear- 
liest hours, became bare, bald, and sad, scored 
by heaps of shale thrown out where, ever since 
Etruscan days, men had delved for copper and 
disfigured the face of nature ; the mines have 
been long unused, but the scars made by them 
remain. The path she followed was always 
the same, a scarce visible mark, passing over 
the short, scant grass which grew on the slate 
and gneiss of the rocks and the calcareous soil, 


194 


THE HALT, 


Now and then there came in sight a flock of 
goats, a group of pine-trees, a church tower, 
or a disused posting-house ; but these were 
far apart, and the whole country was cheer- 
less, tedious, abandoned. 

Her way lay southward, and westward, by 
no regular road, but by tracks, scarcely seen, 
which were made and followed by the strings 
of mules carrying charcoal or lime which had 
passed over those mountain-tops century after 
century since the days of Latin and Etruscan 
and Gaul. 

She went many miles without meeting a 
soul. The habitations were very few, and 
the path she traversed was still only a mule- 
track scarcely traceable. When she at last 
did meet a human being, an old man on an ass 
with sacks before and behind him, she stopped 
and exchanged a few words for sake of saying 
that of which she was so proud: “ I am go- 
ing to meet my son. He is passing through 
the Belva with his regiment. He sent for 
me.” 

And the old man said : 

“ Oh, oh ! That is fine pleasure for you. 
I was a soldier myself long ago — long ago. 
Good-day to you, good wife, and joy be with 
you.” 


THE HALT. 


195 


Then the little tinkling- sound of his ass’s 
hoofs on the rocky ground died away in the 
distance, and she was once more alone in the 
midst of the dry, sear, stony hills, where only 
the horned toad and the squat tarantula had 
their lodgings. 

It grew very hot, and the rocks seemed like 
heated copper as her bare feet smote them. 
Gnats buzzed and snakes basked in the heat. 
There was little or no vegetation, only here 
and there a starved pine or a stunted lentiscus. 
She was fatigued by the hard ground and the 
heat of the sun, but the farther she went the 
lighter grew her heart. “ Soon,” she said to 
herself, “soon I shall see my boy face to 
face ! ” ' 

The burning daylight poured down on her. 
There was no shade on these rocks, nor on 
the level friable soil which divided them. 
Mosquitoes were in clouds, and larger gnats 
in great numbers. But although footsore 
and weary, she was glad of heart. Yes, she 
said to herself, the old man was right ; it was 
a fine pleasure for a woman to see her lad 
safe and sound. 

When she came to a spot where a little 
spring issued from the rocks and flowed into 
a hollow, green with moss of its own creating, 


196 THE HALT. 

she drank from it and rested a short time, eat- 
ing a crust. 

When she passed a house, which was very 
seldom, and paused by its doorway to speak 
with the inmates, she said to them, with a 
glow of pride : 

“ My son’s regiment marches through the 
Belva to-day ; he sent for me to go and see 
them pass; perhaps they will halt there.” 

To have a son marching with his regiment 
seemed to her almost greater than to be a 
crowned queen, and more cruel than the 
saints’ martyrdom. 

In the distance, still very far off, she could 
see some dark lines and spots ; she knew 
that they were the woods crowning the gorge 
of the Belva, the only trees in all that country- 
side. She quickened her pace as she saw 
them. The sun was high. Dear heaven ! if, 
after all, the troops should pass through the 
gorge without halting there ! 

The pedlar had said that it was possible. 

Her legs seemed to bend and quake under- 
neath her at the thought. But she was a 
strong, tenacious woman, and she conquered 
her terror and continued on her way. It was 
two hours and more before she reached the 
outskirts of the woods and saw a little cluster 


THE HALT. 


i9 7 


of huts, flocks of goats, breadths of rough 
grassland, low undergrowth of chestnut and 
oak, tall groups of pine maritime and stone. 
The gorge of the Belva lay beneath. 

It was now a breathless noontide. She 
began to descend under the welcome shade 
of the pines. The wild strawberry plants 
were in flower and gentians were growing 
thick ; she looked at them curiously ; there 
were no flowers, where she lived. 

A goat-herd lay half-asleep upon the moss, 
and awoke at her step. 

“ Have the regiments come into the 
gorge ? ” she asked him, her heart beating 
thickly against her ribs. 

The man answered lazily, but half-awake : 

“Aye: I heard their bugles awhile ago. 
They halt there.” 

“My son is among them, ”• she said with 
pride, and hurried past him and his flock. 

It was such a great thing to have a son a 
soldier. Half an hour’s descent through the 
oak and chestnut scrub brought her where' 
she could see down into the gorge itself. 

Yes, they were there ; she could distin- 
guish the white linen caps, the horses, the 
cannon ; she could see masses moving to and 
fro, the sparkle of metal, the dull yellow-white 


THE HALT. 


1$8 

of canvas. Yes, they were there. She 
crossed herself and thanked God, kneeling 
for a moment on the carpet of fir-needles, 
then rising and hurrying downward. 

The descent was long and winding, and 
the trees hid the bottom of the ravine from 
her view ; but when she reached it the regi- 
ments were still there, resting and breaking 
their fast. She went up to the first group 
of young soldiers whom she saw and said to 
them, "I am his mother — ’Neillo’s mother. 
Will you take me to him, please ? He sent 
for me/’ 

Her voice shook hoarsely with emotion ; 
her fingers plucked at her apron. Before that 
unknown, confused, motley mass of men she 
trembled ; how should she ever find her boy ? 

Her strength began to fail her. She went 
from man to man. The youths grinned in 
her face and turned their backs on her. 
They laughed, they joked, they teased, they 
bandied her about from one to another ; she 
made the round of the camp, stumbling over 
the haversacks lying on the ground, staring 
stupidly at the strange scene. 

There were big field-pieces unlimbered, ar- 
tillery horses unharnessed and tethered, cook- 
ing-fires and eating-vessels, loosened knap- 


THE HALT. 


199 


sacks and dusty jackets ; the men were for 
the most part in their shirt-sleeves, they were 
talking and shouting mirthfully, discipline be- 
ing for the hour relaxed. 

It was a busy, tumultuous, noisy kind of 
repose ; and the cries and the din and the 
movement as she approached made her head 
spin and her ears sing. There seemed such 
numbers, such endless numbers, and they all 
looked alike with their cropped heads, their 
swathed legs, their puny stature. How was 
she to find her lad among that restless multi- 
tude ? 

But she was not daunted. 

A soldier at last, more patient than the 
rest, or more pitiful, explained to her that 
this was the artillery, three field batteries, 
with a cavalry regiment ; that her lad, whom 
he knew by name, was with the infantry in 
the rear column, which had halted a mile fur- 
ther down the glen. She thanked him and 
commended him to the Virgin’s care, and 
went onward ; though her limbs were so stiff 
and their veins were so swollen that she 
walked with difficulty. 

But she was full of joy and anticipation, be- 
cause she had now heard for certain that her 
boy was there, 


200 


THE HALT . 


She spoke merrily to the men whom she 
passed ; light of heart, and insensible to the 
pain of her swollen veins and the smart of 
her tired feet. ’Neillo was there; that was 
enough. 

“ I have got a loaf and a cheese from home 
for my boy,” she said, to a patrol who showed 
some suspicion of her bulging pocket; and 
the patrol laughed, and she laughed too, and 
they let her pass. 

Shrinking from interrogation and observa- 
tion, yet always persevering, she pursued her 
quest, saying always, “ I am ’Neillo’s mother. 
He wished me to come. I have walked all 
the way. Where is he, please ? ” 

The line regiments were some way off 
down the gorge, under the shade of some 
overhanging rocks. Their short, white- 
clothed figures were moving to and fro, 
crowding over camp-kettles, bringing water 
from a spring which a little way off trickled 
from the rocks ; but there was not so much 
gayety and chatter and activity as there had 
been among the gunners and the troopers. 
The officers were standing together under a 
solitary pine-tree, and their voices sounded 
low and grave, and they looked troubled. 
She came among them all timidly, yet with a 


THE HALT. 


201 


bright expectation on her weary, hot face. 
She looked from one to another longingly, 
hopelessly, anxiously, but she could not see 
her ’Neillo. 

At last she came to a group of young men 
who were very quiet and stood about, aim- 
lessly, looking down on something on the 
ground. What they looked at were three 
lads like themselves lying on their backs in 
the shade under a large chestnut-tree. She 
came near to them timidly, with a vague, 
nameless fear chilling her heart. 

What is the matter with them ? ” she 
asked. “ Are they ill ? ” 

The conscripts standing around answere ' 
in low lones : 

“ No, wife ; they are dead. They fell 
down dead on the march. ’Twas thirty 
miles, and so hot.” 

Then she drew nearer and nearer, and bent 
down over the prostrate figures, and drew the 
linen covering off each of their faces in turn ; 
and thus at last she saw her son once more. 



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1 

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THE STABLE-BOY. 





THE STABLE-BOY. 


The stable had once been a church. Not 
very long ago, indeed, it had still been a 
church, though service had not been said in 
it for more than a hundred years. When it 
had been utilized as a livery-stable there had 
been no trouble taken to change its propor 
tions. The pointed arches, the tall columns 
of dark granite, the narrow aisles, the leaden 
casements in the deep-set windows, had all 
been . left unaltered. Wooden partitions had 
been set up between the pillars to make stalls 
for the horses, and straw had been thrown 
down on the obliterated mosaics of the pave- 
ment ; that was all. It was situated in a nar- 
row, old, dark street, with old houses with 
deep eaves, great sunken doorways, and 
curious stone corbels and cornices around it 
on every side. The street had once been 
full of martial movement and ecclesiastical 
splendor, and had a great monastery in it 


20 6 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


which had been burned down during the 
siege by the Imperialists ; its church had es- 
caped the flames, but had sunk to a sadder 
fate. It was a livery-stable, and the clang of 
pails, the stamp of hoofs, and the oaths of 
grooms were the only sounds heard where 
once the .organ had pealed and the intoning 
resounded, and the anthems of Palestrina and 
Corelli echoed. It was left to dirt, to gloom, 
to decay ; the cobwebs hung thick as velvet 
in all the corners, the glass was opaque with 
long-accumulated dust ; the pavement, with 
its marbles and mosaics, was slippery with 
dung and urine ; here and there was a niche 
with an unmutilated statue, here and there 
was a fresco still traceable, a carving still 
visible ; but although its lines were un- 
changed and its serried columns unbroken, it 
was a wreck of itself. 

There are many of these old desecrated 
churches in Italy ; some are workshops, some 
are warehouses, some are granaries, some, 
as this was, stables. And there is no sadder 
sight in the world : their quietude, their 
beauty, and their dignity protest in vain 
against their desecration. They are all old 
churches, built by true artists of the early 
centuries, “masters of the living stone;” 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


207 


churches which men painted, and decorated, 
and covered with emblem and symbol before 
which the rude knight and the rough free 
companion bared their heads and bent their 
knees. But neither their age nor their his- 
tory spares them, there are so many of them 
in the streets, and the worshippers have 
grown so few. 

In this stable there were several horses 
and several vehicles, and coachmen and 
helpers went to and fro in it, and the ancient 
purpose and usage of it troubled none of 
them. The only one who ever thought of it 
wasr a little stable-boy, the butt and slave of 
everyone, who lived there night and day, 
having nowhere else to live, and who loved 
it in his dull way, as some canon or some 
abbot may have loved it in his finer way, dur- 
ing the days of its glory. Gino was the boy’s 
name ; he was fourteen years old ; he had 
neither father nor mother, nor any relatives 
that he knew of, and it was a great thing for 
him to be a stable helper, with a franc a day 
and leave to sleep among the straw in the 
sacristy, which had been turned into a forage 
chamber. He was hardly treated and worked 
hard, for the drivers and stablemen were idle 
and rough, and put all they could upon him. 


208 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


But he was strong- and willing, and did not 
complain. He was fond of the horses, and 
lived willingly among them, seldom leaving 
the dusky old street in which the stables were 
situated. In appearance he was small for his 
age, but robust. He had a round brown face 
with black eyes which had a great, uncon- 
scious pathos in them ; he was never seen 
without his coarse apron and his stable cap. 
There were no feast-days or holy-days for 
him ; all days were alike ; the watering, the 
foddering, the harness-cleaning, the oats-sift- 
ing, the stall-cleaning, never varied. It was 
the same work every week, every month, 
every year. He did not complain. He even 
liked his work. He had been taken into the 
stables out of charity at eight years old, and 
they were all of home he knew. Besides, 
in them he had Stellina. 

Stellina was his supreme comfort and com- 
panion, his one friend. She was a little black 
lupetto dog, with four white feet, and a small 
white point upon her chest, which had gained 
her the name of “little'star.” She had come 
a stray puppy to the stables four years before, 
and Gino had hidden her in the straw and 
fed her, and at last ventured to ask for, and 
by good fortune obtained, permission to keep 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


209 


her openly there. She was very quick and 
courageous in chasing rats, and this prowess 
found her favor in the eyes of the stablemen. 
Stellina, like Gino, never stirred out of the 
street. To her were all unknown the joys of 
meadow and garden, the scamper among the 
grass, the frolicking among the buttercups, 
the splashing in rain-water pools or river shal- 
lows, which are so dear to happier and freer 
dogs. 

Their one world was the old church ; its 
darksome aisles, its musty sacristy, and the 
sharp, uneven cobble-stones paving the space 
in front of it. To Stellina as to her master it 
seemed a kingdom. They knew of nothing 
beyond, and what they had never known they 
did not miss, although instinct sometimes 
moved restlessly in both the boy and the dog 
in a vague, dim want of more space, more 
movement, more freedom. Yet they were 
both content with the busy, harmless, inno- 
cent lives under the old groined arches and 
the broken wings of the stone angels. 

Stellina believed that the horses depended 
alone on her for defence and vigilance. With 
her erect furry ears sharply cocked she 
watched their coming and going, their groom- 
ing and feeding ; barked when they neighed. 


210 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


and growled when they snorted. That the 
horses, and the men too, could not have ex- 
isted an hour without her protection and sur- 
veillance, Stellina was quite sure. When all 
the horses and men were away, which often 
happened, she and Gino conversed with one 
another, sitting side by side in the straw, 
caressing one another, but always keeping a 
weather eye open for any rat or mouse which 
might stir beneath the litter. 

From time to time Stellina had puppies, 
and then she was prouder, happier, more 
vigilant than ever, with a snug nest made 
under one of the horses’ mangers in a bale of 
hay. She was such a pretty dog, and so 
valiant against rodents, that her children 
easily found homes in the neighborhood ; but 
she was a fond mother and mourned for them 
long when they left her, and rejected all the 
consolations of her owner. 

“ Poor dear Stellina ! ” said Gino to her 
one day, when she mourned thus, “ the next 
you have shall stay with you, or one of them 
at least ; the master will not mind ; he knows 
how good you are.” 

So when her next puppies were born he 
renewed his promise that one at least of them 
should never be taken from her ; they were 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


21 1 


three little white things and one black ; 
their father was a white lupetto, who lived at 
a shop near, where they sold old iron and 
brass and copper utensils. 

Gino was as happy in the possession of 
these treasures as Stellina was ; out of his 
pence he bought her milk and tripe and 
wheat-bread, as much as he could eat. He 
had few idle moments, but those he had he 
passed squatted under the manger, looking at 
and talking to the mother and babes. He de- 
nied himself food, and drank nothing except 
the bad water of the stable well, that he might 
get them all they wanted. The men were 
good-natured, and did not tease him about 
his hobby, and the horse near whose hoofs 
Stellina had made her bed sniffed at them 
amiably, and took infinite care not to touch 
them with his iron shoe. Three of the pup- 
pies were already promised ; and the fourth, 
the black one, he hoped to be able, somehow 
or other, to keep with its mother. 

One day, when the puppies were two weeks 
old, he was alone in the stables. It was very 
warm weather, full midsummer. The horses 
and men were all out, only one old mare was 
dozing in her stall ; the doors stood open to 
catch such evening cool as there might come 


212 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


into the air ; the heavy curtains of dust and 
cobwebs hung before the casements sunk 
high in the masonry. Gino had been clean- 
ing, brushing, splashing, sweeping ; he was 
gray with dust and wet with heat ; but he 
was well and happy, leaning against the lin- 
tel and looking into the street ; tired in every 
limb, but satisfied with himself and his little 
world, and above all with Stellina, whom he 
had brushed and combed until she shone like 
a piece of black velvet. She never left her 
children for ten minutes ; but they were sound 
asleep in the hay, and she had stolen out to 
her owner’s side fora second, licking his hand 
and then sitting down on her little haunches 
just outside the door, looking up and down 
the street which was so familiar to her. 

Gino, with a straw in his mouth and his 
shirt-sleeves rolled up, was half-asleep and 
half-dreaming, his eyelids closed and his lips 
parted ; he had a smile on his face. 

“ Good Stellina ! dear little Stellina ! ” he 
said, sleepily, and then for an instant his fa- 
tigue overcame him and he lost consciousness, 
still leaning against the massive column of the 
door ; he was not asleep two minutes, but his 
dream seemed long. 

As a little child he had been in the country 


THE STABLE-BOY. 213 

always, and in his sleep he revisited the green 
fields of his birth whenever he did dream at 
all. He thought he was running with the dog 
through the growing corn, under the maple 
and the vine boughs ; there were tall red tu- 
lips in the corn, and a little runlet of water 
flowing under grass and watercress, and there 
were church bells ringing and birds singing, 
and it was all so green, so cool, so fresh. 
Stellina ran in the brook and splashed the 
drops in his face, and he took off his shoes 
and ran, too, in the brook, and it was so de- 
licious and cold bubbling about his aching 
dusty feet. 

He awoke with a start, and with a shrill 
shriek ringing in his ears. 

In the yellow light of evening he saw Stel- 
lina’s little body swinging in the air ; a noose 
of cord was round her throat, and by it she 
was being drawn into space, the noose tight- 
ening as she was raised higher and higher, and 
the pressure on her gullet forcing her eyes 
from her head and her tongue from her jaws. 
She had given one scream as she was seized, 
then the rope had choked her into silence. 

In an instant Gino knew what it was: the 
dog-snatchers had got her ; the fatal cart, 
with its escort of guards and its brutal lasso- 


214 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


throwers, had come suddenly down the lane 
and had seized her as she sat before the sta- 
ble gates. With a jerk she was flung into the 
cart and the lid shut down, the men laughing 
as they crammed her in and banged the lid. 
Scarcely awake, dull from fatigue and heat, 
and still dazed with his dream, Gino stag- 
gered forward and caught hold of the cart. 

“ Stop ! stop ! ” he cried to them. “ Take 
her out ! give her back ! She has puppies 
in here. They will die ; she will die. Let 
her out! let her out ! ” 

But the guards pushed and dragged him 
off the cart to which he clung, and the dog- 
lifters swore at him, and one man, rougher 
than the rest, struck him in the chest and 
knocked him backward against the stable 
door ; the cries of the dogs within the cart 
and of the street children running along with 
it adding to the confusion and the din. The 
boy was thrown down so that his head struck 
the stone gatepost ; the cart with its myrmi- 
dons rolled on its way. He staggered to his 
feet, holloaing loudly : “ She will die ! they 
will die ! Let her out ! let her out ! ” 

He began to run on after the cart, which 
was turning round a corner, but an old 
woman of the quarter caught him by the arm. 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


215 


“ ’Tis no use, child/’ she said to him, “they 
will not give her. They have no bowels of 
mercy, those brutes. Quiet yourself and let 
them alone, or they will haul you off to 
prison, and then where will your little dog 
be?” 

“ But the puppies will die ! She will die ! ” 
he screamed. “ They are too little to be left, 
and her milk will burst and kill her ! ” 

And he tore himself from the woman’s hold 
and ran headlong after the cart, leaving the 
stables open and unwatched. He knew 
(what Florentine boy does not?) that the 
men would no more give her up than they 
would pity her or him ; they were too hard- 
ened to their brutal work ; but, hoping 
against hope, he ran on and on, blindly 
stumbling in his haste until he overtook the 
procession. The shrieks of the imprisoned 
dogs could be heard above the noise of the 
street. 

“ Give her to me ! give her to me ! She 
has puppies at home, and they will perish ! ” 
he cried again, keeping up step by step with 
the men. The tears rolled down his face ; 
he was sick and gasping; he could hear 
Stellina’s cries. 

The guard who had thrown him down 


21 6 


THE STABLE-BOY, \ 


turned on him savagely. “ Get you gone, or 
I will take you to the Questura for obstruct- 
ing the law ! ” he said, with an oath. 

“ You will only do her more harm than 
good,” said a man in the crowd to the sob- 
bing boy. “ Go home and look up your 
money, and in the morning buy her out if 
you can.” 

“ In the morning ! She has never been 
out of the stables an hour, and how will her 
little ones bear the night starving ? ” 

He sobbed aloud, wringing his hands. 

The little crowd which moved along with 
them murmured and took his part. “ Give 
him the bitch if she is in milk,” said a 
woman's voice. But the creatures of the 
law were only angered by the expostulation ; 
they did not net their victims only to lose 
them, and lose with each the blood-money 
paid for them. Obdurate and unfeeling, and 
swollen with the accursed official tyranny, 
they went on their way, the dog stranglers 
foremost, the cart second, the guards last. 

“You will not get her to-night were it 
ever so,” said some men to him. “ It is 
eight of the clock. Was she never caught 
before ? Nay, nay, do not look so, lad. A 
dog is a dog, and there are scores of them/’ 


THE $ TABLE-BOY , 1 


217 


Then the little throng dispersed and went 
divers ways, and left him alone, its interest 
in him gone. 

Mechanically, by sheer habit, he returned 
to the stable, frightened at his neglect of 
duty, and bewildered by his grief. The lit- 
tle pups were bleating like new-born lambs, 
plaintively, in the straw. “ The pups, the 
pups ! ” he said, over and over again, choking 
down his sobs. They must die without their 
mother ; they could not lap or take any kind 
of food. He took them up one after another 
avid tried to make them suck a wisp of hay 
or an old rag soaked in milk ; but the little 
blind things could not understand ; they only 
whimpered. He put them back, and covered 
them up, and, with the tears running down 
his cheeks, took his pitchfork and began to 
renew the fodder for the night, and clear the 
dung away out of the stalls. 

It had always been a terror upon him lest 
the lasso should seize Stellina ; but she had 
been so home-staying and so prudent that 
the danger had never been realized by him to 
its full extent. Like a true Tuscan, he had 
always been sure that chance would favor 
him. 

But this day the dog-snatchers had not even 


218 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


been commonly fair in their brutality. They 
had seized her on her own ground, on the 
very threshold of her home. 

How she must suffer, cooped up in that nar- 
row hole, without light or air, choked with a 
stifling collar and flung into a horrid den, if she 
had reached the slaughter-house, whither all 
captured dogs are carried ; breaking her heart 
in the agonies of her maternal love and of her 
physical sufferings ! 

Gino worked on, not seeing the straw and 
the dung for his tears. The people had told 
him to get his money together to buy back 
Stellina ; but he had no money ; he never had 
any money ; the scanty wage which he re- 
ceived was always forestalled for payments of 
his food and hers, and for such poor clothing 
as he was forced to wear. He had never 
known in his life what it was to have a franc 
to spare or to put by for future use. Get his 
money together ! They might as well have 
said to the poor misused ass in the scavengers 
cart, “ Get yourself gilded oats and jewelled 
harness ! ” He had nothing. 

When the men came in he told them of his 
grief, and begged their help ; but they were 
improvident and extravagant fellows, in debt 
themselves up to their necks, and fond, of 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


219 


drink. One laughed at him ; one pitied him, 
but, turning out his pockets, found only a half- 
penny ; a third told him with an oath not to 
talk rot, but harness quickly ; and a fourth, 
meaning to be good-natured, said, " Let her 
go, lad, and drown the whelps ; you can get 
another bitch fast enough/’ 

That was all the memory they had of Stel- 
lina, who had jumped on them and frisked 
round them and made much of them, and 
killed rats for them five whole years. 

No one slept in the stables except Gino, 
who, being a homeless boy, had always 
thought it a great blessing to have a bed of 
sacking spread on the straw or on the top of 
one of the corn-bins, as he chose. He had 
usually but little time to sleep, as the horses 
and vehicles came in late and the morning 
work began at daybreak or before it. This 
night he did not even try to sleep, but could 
not have slept had he tried, for the piteous, 
plaintive piping of the baby dogs crying for 
their mother. They whined and wailed un- 
ceasingly, seeking their natural food and their 
natural warmth, and finding neither. He could 
do nothing to comfort them. He hugged them 
to his heart in vain. Hunger was torturing 
them, and they were too young to know any- 


520 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


thing except the first embryonic, semi-con- 
scious pain. The boy was distracted by their 
ceaseless cries, which answered his own pas- 
sionate grief for their absent mother. He felt 
them growing more and more weak, less and 
less warm, and he knew that if they could not 
eat they must die. 

The deep tones of the Santo Spirito clock 
striking four of the morning told him that day 
was here, though no light came as yet into the 
dusky aisles of the desecrated church. The 
horses were already stamping in their stalls 
and striking with their forehoofs against the 
woodwork of their boxes ; he shivered with 
cold, as the little puppies did, in the hot musty 
air reeking with ammonia of the stables, and 
laid the poor little things each in their nest 
under the manger and began to do his morn- 
ing work. But he did his work ill. 

When the men came in they swore at him, 
and hustled him, and one gave him a kick on 
his shin. “ You lumbering dolt!” said this 
one, “go and choke with your bitch. You are 
no use here.” 

They had no pity on him. 

There was a wedding in the town, for which 
all the horses and carriages were engaged, and 
they were all in a hurry, grooming, washing, 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


221 


and polishing with extra speed and care. Gino 
tried to do well, but he scarcely knew what he 
was about, and his head buzzed and span ; he 
was thinking of Stellina in her captivity and 
pain. The puppies whimpered and whined. 
“ Drat those little beasts/’ said the men; 
“pitch them in a pail of water.” 

The livery-stable keeper came in to see if 
the horses were being made smart for the 
bridal festivities ; he heard the noise of the 
puppies and turned round impatiently to the 
spot whence it came. 

“ Take out those whelps,” he said to the 
stable boy. “ You make the place a kennel.” 

“ Oh, sir ! ” said the lad, with a sob, “ they 
were so happy, but the dog-cart took their 
mother last night, and they are dying of hun- 
ger.” 

“ They lassoed your black lupetta ? ” 

“Yes, sir; yesterday, at eight o’clock in 
the evening.” 

“ Well, it cannot be helped. Drown the 
pups ; you can’t rear them. Here, you, For- 
tunio,” said his master, to an ostler, “ if the 
boy is too soft-hearted to do it, chuck them 
in a pail and have done with them.” 

Then he turned on his heel, whistling an 
air from the Cavalleria Rusticana . 


222 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


The ostler Fortunio, nothing loth, went to 
the stall where the little animals were, and 
thrust his hand into the hay under the man- 
ger to drag them out of their nest ; they were 
whimpering piteously. But Gino sprang be- 
fore him, and caught hold of them, and 
hugged them to his breast. 

“ No one shall touch them,” he said, fierce- 
ly. “ Let them be, let them be. Give me 
leave to go out, sir, and I will take them to 
the Macelli and ask them to let me put them 
with their mother. They surely will. Oh, 
they surely will ! ” 

“ They surely will not, you fool,” said his 
master, half touched, half irritated. “ But 
you may try if you like. Get you gone with 
your whimpering little blind beasts.” 

Hugging them up in his apron, the boy 
waited not one moment, but stumbled out of 
the door, the tears still blinding his eyes, and 
ran down the street. He went out so little 
that he knew not where the slaughter-houses 
were, nor how to get to them ; but he knew 
vaguely that they were out at the northwest 
of the town, where the country began, and 
took his uncertain way thither. Further on 
he asked the road, and, being told, ran on 
along the waterside, while the sun blazed on 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


223 


the pavements, and on the front walls of the 
palaces. 

It is a long way from the Oltramo, where 
the stables were, across the bridge and along 
the quays and boulevards to the Rifridi sub- 
urb, where the public slaughter-houses are 
situated ; a long, ugly, dusty way, lying 
through the hideous modern streets and vul- 
gar squares, which have sprung up like 
wens and tumors between the Porta al Prato 
and the gates of San Gallo and of Santa 
Croce. 

The boy went out of the former gate, and 
went onward over stones and dust, to what 
is called the Ponte Rocco. All was dreary, 
noisome, full of strife and squalor. There 
were dirty tramway stations, heaps of refuse, 
stinking soap factories, mounds of cinder and 
peat, broken-down hedges, bald-faced houses, 
women and children filthy and ragged, drear- 
iness and ugliness as far as the eyes could 
see, until they met the lovely lines of the 
mountains beyond. To such a pass has 
modern greed and modern waste (for the 
two go ever hand-in-hand) brought this once 
noble and royal road, which, bordered by 
stately walls and lovely gardens, led to the 
painted courts and cypress woods of the 


224 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


hunting-palace, where the Venus wrings the 
water from her hair. 

The wailing of the puppies was feebler and 
fainter ; one of them was quite still. He 
walked as fast as ever he could, feeling sick 
and weak himself, not having slept and not 
having eaten. The gates of the slaughter- 
house stood open, guards were idling about 
the dog-cart, and the lassoers were coming 
out for their morning’s gyrations ; poor bleat- 
ing calves were being driven into sheds ; the 
barking and howling of dogs, the bellowing 
of cattle, the plaintive voices of sheep were 
all mingled together in one far-off, indistinct, 
terrible protest of unpitied woe. Gino went 
on unobserved until he entered the building. 
There he was roughly stopped and asked his 
business. 

“ You took the mother last night, and they 
are dying for need of her,” he said, as he 
opened his apron and showed the puppies. 
“ Will you let me take them to her in the 
cell ? They are such little things, only ten 
days old ; they cannot see, and they will die, 
and she will die too on account of her milk.” 

The men to whom he pleaded broke into 
loud, unkind laughter. 

“ Do you think the Macelli is a foundling 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


225 


hospital ? Get out, you and your whelps ! 
If you bring the order from the Communal 
Palace and the money, you can take the bitch 
away. A franc and a half a day for her food ; 
and twelve francs the tub ; and two francs the 
fine. You know that.” 

“ But I have no money!” he cried, “and 
the pups are dying, and Stellina will die too ! 
Take them to her — for pity’s sake, take them 
to her ! If you will not let me in ” 

“ What is that lad shrieking about ? ” said 
the hoarse, savage voice of the superinten- 
dent. “ How dare you let him through the 
gates ! What does he come for ? Stop his 
bellowing.” 

“ Oh, good sir ! kind sir, do let me take 
her children to Stellina ! ” cried the boy, and 
tried to unfold his little tale ; but the superin- 
tendent roughly bade him hold his tongue. 

“ Was the dog’s tax paid ? ” he added 
sharply. 

“ No, sir, it never was ; but she was so 
much use and so good ; and she must die, 
and the puppies too, if you will not let them 
go to her,” said the boy, breaking down in 
his prayer, and sobbing as if his heart would 
break. 

“Turn him out,” said the superintendent 


226 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


curtly to his men. “ We can have no maud- 
lin, mewing beggars in these gates. Take 
him to the Questura if he resist. Stay. 
Write down his name and address. He must 
be summoned for contravention.” 

“ But they are dying ! ” cried Gino, desper- 
ately. The superintendent laughed, and his 
men grinned. Dogs died there every day. 
The only object of a dog’s life was, in their 
view of it, to die, and yield skin for the glove 
or toy makers, and phosphates for the manu- 
facturers of manure. 

“ Put the fool outside the gates,” said the 
superior officer. 

They did so, first wringing out of him in 
his misery and bewilderment the declaration 
of who he was, whom he served, and where 
he lived. He could not tear himself away 
from the vicinity of Stellina. 

“ Bring the money and buy her out,” they 
had said to him. But for a poor lad, if he be 
honest, to get money is an impossibility ; he 
might as well try to get blood out of a stone, 
water out of a brick. He had nothing in the 
world except the boots and clothes in which 
he stood. 

He had not forgotten his work, but he 
could not bring himself to go away and go 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


227 


back. He went and sat down on some rough 
grass near the edge of the Mugnone water* 
and looked at the little things in his apron. 
They were all dead but one. Their tender 
and frail organisms had been unable to resist 
hunger and neglect. He kept hoping that 
he might see someone, do something, be able 
to help her in some way. He kept the little 
dead pups in his apron, and tried to warm the 
one still living inside his shirt against his 
flesh. But it was growing colder and colder, 
and though it felt about feebly with its lips 
seeking nourishment, there was but little life 
left in it. He got up and walked to and fro, 
up and down, here and there, stupidly, long- 
ing for some word of help, of counsel, of as- 
surance as to his dog’s safety. She might be 
dead now of terror, of fever, of struggle 
against her fate. In this horrible place, where 
nothing came except for torture and death, 
there was no pity. With money, escape 
could be bought, but he could no more get 
money than he could root up the Baptistery 
or the Apennines. 

While he held the last surviving puppy in 
his breast he felt its body and limbs twitch ; 
he heard it wail feebly ; he looked at it and 
saw that it also was dying. In another few 


228 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


minutes more it was dead. He laid it with 
its brothers in his apron, and folded the 
coarse canvas round them. He intended to 
take them home. 

Half the day had dragged by ; it was now 
three o’clock. The heat was great. There 
was a high wind, and it blew the dust and 
sand around him in circles. 

At last he saw a man whom he knew, a 
carter of forage, by name Zanobi, who had 
come often to the stables, and had known 
Stellina. The boy went to him and told him 
his story ; the carter was good-hearted and 
not without sympathy. Money he had none 
to give, but he did what he could. 

“ I have a cousin who works yonder,” he 
said, with a gesture toward the slaughter- 
houses. “ After my day is done I will see 
him and ask what one could do to get Stel- 
lina out. Alas, I know it means money, and 
much money ; but perhaps, as a favor, and if 
one promised to send her in the country — at 
any rate I will see him, and I dare say he will 
manage to show her to me. Cheer up ; they 
must let two days and a half go by before they 
kill the dogs or give them to the doctors. Get 
you home to your stables or you will lose 
your place, and what good will that do? Go 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


229 

home now, promise me, child, and when I 
have heard anything I will come round in the 
evening and tell you what I know. But un- 
less you will go to your stables I will do 
nothing ; for what will you better Stellina by 
throwing yourself out of place ? ” 

Then the man went on with his wagon-load 
of iron rails and rods, and Gino turned away 
and began to walk toward his home, knowing 
that the carter spoke truly. A little spark of 
hope had sprung, up in his heart. Perhaps 
after all she might be saved ; but the pups — 
for them there was no hope. He carried 
them still in his apron. He meant to bury 
them, when no one was looking, under the 
manger where they had been born. 

• He returned home over the railway embank- 
ments and along the boulevards. It was a long 
way, and he went slowly, for he was terribly 
tired, and his stomach had long been empty. 

It was five in the afternoon when he reached 
the livery-stable. The stable-man who had 
had to do his duty for him met him with a rain 
of blows from a stick and a volley of abuse. 
Gino did not resist, nor did he answer. Pie 
said nothing and put his apron with the little 
dead babes in it in a corner where no one 
saw. He drank thirstily of the bad water 


230 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


and resumed his work in silence. All the 
carriages and coachmen were out ; the helper, 
tired of his long day shut up there alone, 
flung a bit of wood at his head, bade him look 
sharp or he would get more, and went away. 
When he was quite sure that he was gone, 
Gino dug a hole under the manger in the 
earth under the pavement and laid some hay 
in it and then buried the puppies. When the 
place was closed and the litter strewn over it, 
no one could tell that the ground had ever 
been disturbed. 

“ If she come back she will understand they 
are there,” he said to himself. 

The rest of the day wore away. The 
men and the horses came in hot, tired, and 
out of temper, after the long day with the 
nuptial party in the country. There were 
loud wrangling, banging, swearing, quarrel- 
ling; the boy was unnoticed except that he 
received now a cuff on the head, now a kick 
on the shins. No one asked him anything 
of Stellina ; all were in haste to unharness 
and get away to their suppers. Gino did not 
speak; he did his work when he was wanted, 
but his head swam and his heart ached ; still 
he clung to his one hope of hearing news 
from the carter. 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


23 1 


When the horses were in their stalls and 
the carriages rolled into the chancel, which 
served as coach-house, and the drivers and 
helpers were on the point of going to their 
evening meal, their employer came in. He 
had been drinking, he was heated ; he had 
lost at lotto, and he was in that humor in 
which a naturally good-natured man is for the 
time being a savage tyrant, and vents his ill- 
humor on the first thing he sees. He caught 
sight of the boy and attacked him. 

“ Oh, you there ! I hear you have been 
out all day. I gave you leave to go out for an 
hour, and you take a day ! A fine payment for 
all my charity ! What are you rubbing down 
that horse for? You are not here to rub 
down horses, a brat like you. Claudio asked 
you? Let Claudio do his own work. Where 
is he ? Gone out ? Gone out ten minutes after 
he brings in his carriage ? You and he may 
leave these stables to-morrow. To-morrow, 
before noon, you take your week’s wages and 
go. You are a young scoundrel.” 

Gino trembled and grew white, but he said 
nothing. He thought, “ If Stellina come out 
I will work somewhere, somehow for her. 
We might get together into the country.” 

Yet he felt stunned; he could not imagine 


232 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


that he should live anywhere except in these 
stables of the old church. 

His employer scolded, swore, and found 
fault for many minutes more, venting his ill- 
humor on men and beasts, and then went 
away leaving terror and dismay behind him. 
Gino alone of them all did not speak. 

“ Cheer up, little chap ; I will get you a 
place,” said an old driver who was always 
kind to him in a rough way. “You know 
you did wrong staying out all day. The 
master can’t abide idlers.” 

Gino did not defend himself. 

An hour later he was alone as usual at 
night in the stable. There was no light ex- 
cept that which came from one old lantern 
swinging from the high groined roof. The 
doors were open to the street. In the gloom 
he saw a man’s figure, and the yellow rays of 
the lantern fell on the face of his friend, the 
carter, Zanobi. 

“ Stellina ! ” cried the boy, as he sprang 
forward breathless. The carter came across 
the threshold and sat down on a pail which 
was turned upside down. 

“ Do not fret, my poor lad,” he said, 
slowly. “ I am rare sorry to bring you no 
better news,” 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


233 


“ She is dead ! ” cried Gino. 

“They killed her,” said Zanobi, bitterly. 
“ Her milk and her grief drove her wild, and 
they were afraid of her, and got the vet to 
declare she was mad, and they killed her at 
nine o’clock in the morning, poor little brave 
soul ! No bowels of mercy in them, even for 
her as a mother ! And I saw her pretty black 
skin even now a-drying on a nail. Lord save 
us, child, do you not take on so ! ” 

Gino had fallen speechless under the old 
mare’s body as she stood munching in her 
stall. 

The carter dashed water on his head and 
face, and shook him roughly, and he soon 
rallied, or seemed to rally, and said little ex* 
cept to ask again and again the details of her 
death. Zanobi went away as the clock struck 
ten of the night, glad that the shock had 
passed off without evil effects. “ He was 
fond of the dog, but it was only a dog, and 
he will not fret much. I will buy one for him 
somewhere to-morrow,” thought the good 
rude man as he went away in the moonlight 
between the tall ancient houses. 

Gino was left alone. He sat still some 
time, his chin resting on his hands ; at last 
he got up and drank thirstily, stroked the old 


234 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


mare upon her nose, and barred the stable- 
door. 

By the light of the lamp he cleaned his 
boots and the metal clasp of his waist-belt, 
and laid them together on the lid of a corn- 
bin, with an old dirty mass-book which had 
been given him in his childhood. 

Then he took his fork and upturned the 
hay which covered the stone under which the 
dead puppies lay ; he raised the stone and 
took them out and kissed them ; they were 
all which was left of Stellina. He put them 
in his apron and slung them round his throat. 
He paused a little while looking at the dark- 
ness which hid the aisles of the church from 
his sight ; close at hand the rays of the lan- 
tern shone on the ribbed roof, the mutilated 
angels, the wooden gates of the stalls ; there 
was no sound but of the breathing of the 
horses, and the hot black space was full of 
their scent. 

Gino crossed himself ; then he fastened one 
of the stable halters fast to a beam, passed 
its noose round his neck, and mounted a 
wooden stool on which he had sat hundreds 
of evenings when his work was done, with 
Stellina’s little form between his knees. 


THE STABLE-BOY. 


235 


Then he kicked the stool from under his 
bare feet. 

When the men came in the morning, and, 
finding the doors closed, with none to open 
them, had them forced by smiths, they saw 
Gino hanging there dead, the dead puppies 
tied around his neck. 

Life had been too hard for the little stable- 
boy. 


V 



LA ROSSICCIA. 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


“ Per rossiccia, rossiccia ’1 & ; ma ’1 & beb 
loccia.” 

“ For red, yes, she is red, but she is a big 
beauty.” 

So said a man leaning on his spade among 
the flax-fields, and following with his eyes the 
form of a young and handsome woman who 
stepped with a lithe step over the clods of 
fresh-turned earth. He was an old man, 
bent and black with long years of toil under 
hot suns ; but he was not so old that he 
could not tell a good-looking lass when he 
saw one. 

She was always called La Rossiccia on ac- 
count of that ruddy, auburn hair which the 
dead Venetian painters loved, and which she 
possessed ; and she had with it the milk- 
white skin which usually is its corollary ; she 
had a straight profile, a beautiful throat, and 
a figure fit for a statue of Artemis ; she was 


240 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


famous for that goddess-like form on all her 
country-side, and the men and youths all said 
as the old laborer had done, “ Rossiccia ’1 e, 
ma ’1 e belloccia.” She was only a poor girl, 
very poor, daughter of a bargeman who had 
gone to and fro on the broad waters of the 
Po, carrying charcoal and timber, and doing 
rough work from morn till eve till he could 
do it no longer, and lay bedridden. The 
house she lived in was hardly more than a 
hut, built up with stones and wattles on the 
edge of a great plain covered with flax, 
through which the sluggish waters of a canal 
passed, giving out fever heats in summer and 
chilly mists in winter. Far away in the dis- 
tance were the towers and domes and bridges 
of a once great city, Ferrara, but they were 
so far away that they were mere specks in the 
golden haze of the horizon, and within the 
wails of Ferrara she had never been. 

She was by name Caterina Fallaschi, but 
she was known to the few people who made 
up her little world as Rossiccia ; she had 
been called so ever since her babyhood, when 
her auburn curls had shone in the sun as she 
danced in the marsh pools or ran through 
the dust of the highway, which was barely 
trodden now by man or beast, though in the 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


241 


old posting days it had been a well-known 
road for travellers and the carriers of the 
mail. 

The little group of sun-baked, mist-soaked 
cottages stood together among the rank grass 
on the left bank of the canal, and the sluggish, 
muddy waters and the white deserted road 
went by them, going to forms of life of which 
the occupants of these cabins knew nothing, 
and never would know aught. All around 
them were the flat fields, intersected by 
ditches, with here and there a few pollarded 
willows and lopped mulberries, and above 
them all the beautiful sky ; the same blue se- 
rene sky as the painters of the Lombard 
schools put above their Madonnas and behincj, 
their angels. For many months of the year 
it was blue as the flax flowering under it ; and 
when it was covered with silvery mist or black 
with storm-cloud it was always beautiful ; not 
so intense in color as the sky farther south, 
but ethereal, exquisite, spiritual. It lent some- 
thing of its own loveliness to the monotonous 
plain, the stagnant water, the dull road ; it 
brought its own grace and glory even to the 
squalid huts, until the house-leek on their 
thatch looked gold and the bulrushes by their 
water steps seemed the spears of fairy armies. 


242 


LA R OS SIC CIA. 


There was only one blot upon it to which it 
could lend no enchantment, of which its light 
and air could not soften the harsh and offend- 
ing lines. It was the ugly whitewashed fort 
which stood in the midst of the flax-fields, 
angular, ominous, sombre, suspicious, the 
modern edifice which was called the Polve- 
riera, and which was a blot upon the land- 
scape, speaking ever of the brutal machinery 
of modern war. 

These broad, level lands which unrolled 
themselves to the far edge of the mountains 
had seen many centuries of carnage, from the 
hordes of the Huns and the Goths to the bat- 
talions and squadrons of Napoleon, from the 
children of Etruria flying before the march of 
the Legions, to the conscripts of France rally- 
ing at the voice of Desaix as the sun set on 
Marengo. The black toads who lived under 
the reeds had seen the young soldiers, black- 
ened and burned with the smoke of Areola, 
marching with weary feet along the dusty 
highway where nothing now passed except 
mule carts and bullock wagons ; and against 
the plastered walls of the posting-house there 
had leaned the matchlocks and there had 
swung the torches of free lances and of reiters 
as the armies of the emperors poured over the 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


243 


Lombard plains generation after generation, 
when the plough and harrow passed over the 
sites of ruined cities, and smoking hamlets 
marked the passage of the conquerors. But 
of all which it had witnessed nothing had 
been so ugly, so mean, and yet so deadly as 
this round white fort rising naked, ominous, 
out of the fields around with immeasurable 
powers of destruction shut within its enceinte, 
yet without ignoble and unlovely, with all the 
meanness and the ugliness of modern archi- 
tecture. 

On these plains, which had seen the splen- 
dor of Francis, the brilliancy of Pescara, 
which had drunk the hero’s blood of Bayard, 
and of Gaston de Foix, which had been the 
battle-field of Europe through so many ages, 
ever since the fires of Altala had lit up its 
morning skies, this powder magazine, com- 
mon and ugly as a factory, set bare and an- 
gular among the frogs and flax, was an epit- 
ome of that dreariness and deadliness which 
lie like a curse on modern war as on modern 
peace. 

It held force enough within it to blow up 
into nothingness a million of men ; but in its 
outer aspect it was ignoble, common, trivial, 
emblem of the time which had created it. It 


244 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


had been built but a few years, and the peo- 
ple of the plains hated it, dreaded it, looked 
askance at it as they perforce passed beneath 
its shadow in their boats or with their mules. 
It stood a perpetual menace, a standing ter- 
ror amid the slow and quiet waters and 
the peaceful fields. The building of it had 
scarred and spoiled the earth around and 
left mounds of rubble and bare earth where 
nettles alone flourished. When it had been 
completed, and the ordnance wagons and 
their heavy caissons had come slowly 
through the darkness of winter days to bring 
it the explosives which were to be stored in 
it, the escort of troopers passing slowly on 
either side of the long lines of wagons, a 
weight of fear and of ever-present peril fell 
on the souls of the dwellers near. It was an 
infernal thing set ever in their sight. For 
scores of miles along those level lands the 
ugly white thing could be seen, its iron con- 
ducting-rods disfiguring the sky and the land- 
scape, its lines of telegraph wires stretching 
far and wide until they were lost in space. 

But habit familiarizes with all forms of 
horror ; and in a year or two after the build- 
ing of it the people of the district thought 
little of it except to look anxiously toward it 


LA R0SS1CCIA. 


245 


in hours when electric storms were driving 
their clouds in masses over the plains, and 
lightnings ran in fury from the distant Alps 
to the unseen seas. They knew that if the 
lightning struck it they and theirs for miles 
around would be hurled up to the high 
heavens in lifeless, shattered, smoking frag- 
ments ; the boatmen and bargees knew it, 
the laborers and carters knew it, the millers 
knew it whose mill-wheels turned in the 
sullen waters, the beggars knew it who sat 
in the shade or the sun ; but familiarity 
breeds indifference, if not contempt, and they 
lived within reach of the imprisoned powder- 
devils as the vintagers live and laugh on the 
slopes beneath Vesuvius and under the 
woods of Etna. Only these people of the 
plains rarely laughed, because the pellagra 
was constantly among them, eating away 
their skins and poisoning their blood, and 
ague and marsh fever often laid them low, 
and they worked for other men’s profit, and 
they had little joy in their lives, and small 
hope. The soldiers who came to guard the 
powder magazine brought with them, more- 
over, into the district around a little money 
and the zest of something novel. There 
were no more than the strict number needful 


246 


LA ROSSICCTA. 


for the care and defence of the building, and 
those few hated the service in it and their 
exile from Ferrara or Mantua. But when 
any of them were off guard they sauntered to 
the' old post-house or to the water-mills, and 
gossiped and drank and played some game 
or another, and found favor invariably in the 
eyes of the women. They were but ugly fel- 
lows in ugly uniforms, with shaven heads and 
of puny stature ; wholly unlike their forefa- 
thers, who had worn their long rapiers, their 
bright-colored doublets, their loose love-locks, 
their plumed hats so gallantly in those old 
days of free companions and musketeers, of 
Marignan and of Pavia, of which the waters 
rippling among the reeds and the church stee- 
ples rising among the mulberries seemed still 
to tell so many tales. But they were men, and 
better than nothing, as they brought with them 
some little change, some little stimulant into 
the sickly, poverty-stricken hamlet among the 
flax. Yet the toilers of the soil loved them 
not; the soldiers were strangers, and the Ital- 
ian dreads and dislikes strangers; and the 
fact that they were welcomed by their women 
made them disliked by the women's husbands 
and brothers and lovers. The soldiers were, 
moreover, in accordance with the policy and 


LA R OS SIC C LA. 


247 


practice of the state, generally sent from 
southern provinces, and therefore foreigners 
in the sight of the dwellers of the plains. 
They were called the accursed Sicilians, Sici- 
lian being a generic name used to denote all 
who came from the lands where oranges and 
citrons were common orchard trees, and the 
evil eye was held in honor. 

The sight of the soldiers offended Rossic- 
cia more than anyone ; when they bathed in 
the canal, or ran races along the road, or 
sauntered in their shirt-sleeves out of the sul- 
len-looking gates of the depot, they were 
odious to her sight ; other women might chat 
with them, kiss with them, drink with them ; 
she would do none of these things. They 
were foreigners, and they were slaves. 

“ Poor lads ! they cannot help themselves/’ 
said her father. 

“ They could go over seas,” she answered. 

Many like them did go ; to get to some 
land as far away as possible, where there is 
no conscription, is the dream of the Italian 
peasant ; his dream takes him oftentimes 
where he dies miserably and prematurely in 
the sands of Panama, in the swamps of the 
Amazons, in the floods and frosts of the 
West, in the opium-hells of New York. 


248 


LA R OS SIC CIA. 


The soldiers hated the place no less than 
they were hated in it. The strict discipline, 
the dreary inaction, the rare relaxation, and 
the severe rules which the safety of the fort 
demanded made life bitter and irksome to 
these young men, who a little while ago had 
been shepherds wandering with their flocks, 
or cattle-keepers wild and free among the 
myrtle, and lentiscus, or loafers in sunny 
southern streets, or charcoal-burners in the 
deep green cork-woods, or laborers upon the 
rich volcanic soil. The exactions and con- 
straints of barrack-life are always odious, but 
in a powder-magazine their burden is, of ne- 
cessity, much heavier, their ligatures much 
more tightly drawn. No man can play tru- 
ant, or infringe a rule, for he knows well 
that his life and his comrades’ lives will pay 
the forfeit for any negligence, if a spark from 
a pipe be shaken out, or a match be let drop 
from a careless hand. Ague and fever lurked 
in all the flax and hemp fields, and floated 
over the swamps in which, for sake of isola- 
tion, the powder depot had been built ; the 
soldiers cooped up in it — most of them in 
their second year of service — grew lean and 
yellow and hollow-eyed. The night sentries 
suffered most, for when the moon rose death 


LA J? OS SIC CIA . 


249 


rose with it. There was only one person in 
the district whom the miasma never hurt : it 
was Rossiccia. Her health was so perfect, 
her frame so vigorous, that the deadly va- 
pors swept around her and over her harm- 
lessly, though she took no heed of them, and 
no precaution against them, but lightly smote 
with bare feet the poisonous soil, and sang 
joyously as she met the fever - laden lan- 
guors of the wind. She had the force and 
the invulnerability of the “ huntress of the 
moon,” and from her earliest years she had 
been proof against all disease, as though her 
mortal form were nourished by a goddess’s 
blood. 

Her father was a sallow, sickly man, lying 
half his days on his back on his grass mat- 
tress. Her brothers were weakly youths, 
though they labored like the rest among the 
flax and hemp. Her mother had died years 
before, in the early childhood of Rossiccia. 
Whence had sprung this miracle of admira- 
ble and vigorous life ? No one could say. 
Some gossips recollected that the mother, 
when young and good-looking, had spent one 
carnival time in Ferrara, and had come back 
pregnant, and that there had been talk of a 
noble of that town, and that there had been 


250 


LA ROSS/CCTA. 


for awhile easier means and better food in 
their cabin, and that when the child had been 
born the mother had shown her to the neigh- 
bors, and had said, “ Rare race runs in her 
veins ; and see her satin skin ! ” But her pu- 
tative father had never shown either anger or 
jealousy, and had accepted the child with the 
rest, only he had never liked her. Rossiccia 
knew these suspicions of her origin, as peo- 
ple do know that which intimately concerns 
them, yet which is never directly told to them 
in actual words ; and she flattered and 
amused herself with many dreams of glory, 
and her proud fancies made her cleaner and 
more orderly, more careful and coquettish in 
the putting on of her poor clothes, than were 
the wretched women around her, whose skin 
never touched water from one Easter to an- 
other, and who huddled on their rags with- 
out a thought of comeliness or cleanliness. 
She waited for something ; she knew not 
what; some favor of fortune, some change, 
some miracle. 

At sixteen she had married one of the 
laborers, without love, from that instinct to- 
ward sexual union common to her class. She 
had been very poor ; he had treated her ill. 
She had had a child and buried it, and the 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


251 


man had died of fever — all before two years 
more had passed over her head. She had 
gone back to live with her family, saying to 
herself, “ Nessun me pigliera piu ” (“ Nobody 
shall get me again ”). Her only associations 
with what is called love were discomfort, quar- 
rels, physical pains. With her own people 
she was poor, indeed, but unmolested : she 
was of use to them, and they were grateful, 
in a rough, dumb, semi-conscious way : as the 
oxen in the carts were when she gave them 
water and wiped the dust from their hot eyes. 

In the liberty and comparative contentment 
which followed her return to her father she re- 
turned to work at the flax-bleaching ; foul- 
smelling unhealthy work : for they have not 
patience to let it be done by the rains and the 
suns, as of old, but steep the cut stalks in acids 
and whiten them over-much and over-quick- 
ly, so that the strands soon rot and the linen 
woven therefrom soon grows poor and ragged. 
But neither the evil smells nor the evil exhala- 
tions hurt her ; and she made her daily dole 
somewhere or other out of the flax, either by 
field work or factory. When the flax was in 
flower blue as the sky, the ugly land, level 
though it was, grew beautiful, and the wonder 
of its transformation sometimes touched her 


2$2 


LA LOS SIC C/A. 


as she worked among it : a little bright 
flower, gay as a forget-me-not, turning to so 
many things, filling the housewives' presses, 
covering the bridal couch, sheltering the bed 
in labor, filling looms and warehouses and 
shops, clothing gentlefolk, putting food in 
poor men’s mouths. She was sorry when the 
blossoms faded and the stalks were cut down. 
Something of her heart seemed to go out with 
the dry, dull brown bundles which the acid 
ate. But all these were foolish wandering 
fancies, which she told to no one. The flax 
helped her to her daily bread ; that was all the 
outward concern she had with it. 

The women of her little world were very 
envious of her. They knew very well that in 
their own poor squalid world she was supreme. 
The black - browed, yellow - skinned soldiers 
from the fort crowded around her like wasps 
about a ripe peach, and the boatmen and 
towing-men upon the canal went to mass at 
the half-ruined lime-washed church only on 
the chance of seeing her dip her fingers in 
the holy- water basin or kneel down to say 
her Aves on the damp red bricks. Rossiccia 
only threw them a few ungracious words, or 
laughed at them rudely, showing her white 
teeth ; but her indifference was more attractive 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


253 


than the willingness of others. And in that 
ague-stricken, fever-haunted community her 
health alone was an amazing and irresistible 
charm. She was like a green and lusty vine, 
springing lithely when all the rest of the vine- 
yard was tainted and sear. 

She had courage, too ; that rarest quality 
on Italian soil. They had seen her once, when 
the waters flooded the fields, wading and 
swimming to rescue the old and feeble who 
had been surprised by the flood ; and once 
again, when a goaded ox had charged down 
among a group of children, she had seized 
him by his lowered horns and held him firm 
and turned him backward, the great creature 
obedient to her commands. She had no fear 
in her, except one ; and of that she was 
ashamed and never spoke. It was a vague, 
shapeless, but painful fear of the Polveriera. 
It had been built in her childhood, and she 
had watched its rising with dislike and terror. 
It was associated in her mind with the groans 
of the poor oxen and mules lashed brutally as 
they had brought the materials for its build- 
ing, and it had destroyed a piece of waste land 
which had been covered with grasses and reeds 
and bryony and bearberry ; a place precious 
to children and sacred to their play through 


254 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


many generations. She had watched the 
wild shrubs uprooted, the sods upturned, the 
brambles and briars burned, the spades and 
mattocks plunged into the wounded earth, and 
the whole spot ruined, that the foundations of 
the powder-fort might be laid. Her play-place 
had been as sacred to her as the waters of the 
Alphseus and the woods and lawns of Olympus 
were to a child of Greece. 

In her dumb shut soul there stirred, half- 
consciously, that same sympathy with dese- 
crated and violated nature which from the 
great soul of Leconte de Lisle pours forth in 
articulate and conscious splendor of invective 
in the imprecations of La Foret Vierge. She 
knew not and could not have said what moved 
her, but it was the same sentiment, though in 
her immature and embryonic, fated never to 
know birth. She was unlike the people round 
her. She had more daring and more tender- 
ness. When the children put living lizards 
on the hot charcoal, or sewed their mouths up 
to see the vain efforts of the little creatures in 
their torture, she rescued the poor harmless 
things ; or, if she came too late to do so, made 
their tormentors feel the weight of her strong 
hand. “ Guai ! c’ e la Rossiccia ! ” the cow- 
ardly urchins shouted to one another when 


LA R OS SIC CIA. 


255 


they saw her approach, if they were busy with 
any cruel sport. They were horribly afraid 
of her, though when they were sick, or hurt, 
or in trouble she would do more for them than 
their own mothers would do ; and diphtheria, 
and scrofula, and fever were often among 
them, giving them as their last cradle a yard 
of the damp and dangerous earth where the 
rank grass and the black crosses were so 
thick. 

She had watched the erection and comple- 
tion of the edifice with hatred of it in her soul, 
and she had seen the files of grim wagons 
bringing it the deadly provisions it needed as 
she might have watched a dragon fed with 
human flesh. The other children had capered 
for joy as the whips had cracked, and the 
wheels of the ordnance wagons had creaked 
and jolted; but she had turned her back on 
them sullenly, thinking of the red bearberry 
fruit and the wild white roses she had been 
used to gather where there now stood that 
ugly, naked, frowning tower of death which 
none could pass near unchallenged. So in 
her womanhood the artillerymen who were 
stationed in the fort found no favor in her 
sight ; and she always wished that the tower 
were not there, two miles off her own dwell- 


256 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


ing, with its close-packed powers of death ly- 
ing unseen behind its walls. It was a scar on 
the landscape, a blot on the horizon, and when 
the sun set behind it and its whitewash 
changed in the shadows into gray, it lost its 
common sordid look and seemed to grow sin* 
ister and gigantic, menacing even the sky. 

Once or twice, to cure herself of her fancies, 
she went close up to its base, answering the 
challenge of the sentries ; not a bough or 
briar or blade of grass grew nigh ; the ground 
around had all been flattened and battened 
down, so that no seed could multiply upon it. 
There was not a single trace of the leafy life 
which once had flourished there and sheltered 
the hare and the lizard and the low-nesting 
birds. There were only the sullen casements, 
the ugly sentry-boxes, the iron-clamped doors, 
the bare walls where the plaster was peeling 
from the damp and the sun. She went away 
from it hating it more, thinking of the time 
when here on its site she had filled her 
little brown hands with berries and seen 
the green locust cling to the wild oleander 
blooms. 

Some vague sad sense of the perpetual de- 
struction of all beauty and all peace which is 
forever at work under the pressure of an ar- 


LA R0SS1CC1A. 


25 7 


tificially created necessity came to her, igno- 
rant and isolated creature though she was. 
Some perception of the hideous insanity with 
which these engines of war are perpetually 
multiplied and accumulated and every year 
made more and more intricate, deadly, and 
universal seemed borne in upon her with the 
sight of that ugly magazine of war standing 
nude and straight and angular where once the 
finches nested and the asphodel bloomed. 
Men had not always used that foul gunpow- 
der, she knew. In the village church (once a 
great and stately one) where she went on 
every holy day and feast day there were fres- 
coed walls, faded and mildewed, but still ,easy 
to see, where the knights rode at each other 
lance in rest, and the bowmen met the charges 
of the pikes, and the angelic hosts hovered 
above in gay panoply, smiting the paynim 
with the sun-rays for their spears ; time had 
been, she knew, when a stout heart and a sup- 
ple blade and a strong arm had been all the 
weapons a man needed in warfare, when the 
race had been really to the swift and the bat- 
tle to the strong. 

“ Were they ever like these ?” she asked 
the sacristan one day, pointing to the fresco 
which had been begun by Vittore Pisano, 


258 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


and continued by some unknown but vigor- 
ous hand. 

“ Ay, ay,” he answered, “ they made war 
just so ; all fair and open, and the good saints 
striking for the right.” 

“ It was better so,” said Rossiccia, gravely 
and with regret. 

“ For sure it was better so,” said the sac- 
ristan ; “ nowadays they mix the devil’s doses 
in factories and kill you so that no man sees 
or knows whence your death comes. Some- 
one sets a tube a-smoking miles off you be- 
hind a bank or a hedge, and you and all 
round you fall dead men. You don’t even 
see your enemy oftentimes ; ’tis only a puff 
of smoke and a screech ; and the saints keep 
themselves safe behind the clouds.” 

One day, when she was near the fort, one 
of the officers came out of it and overtook 
her. 

“ I have seen you here more than once,” 
he said, with severity and suspicion. “What 
brings you here ? You have no errand ? ” 

“ No,” she answered him, curtly. 

“ Why do you come, then ? At evening, 
too ! The sentinels should arrest you.” 

“ Arrest me if you like.” 

u Why do you come ? Tell me.” 


LA R OS SIC CIA. 


259 


“ It is no business of yours.” 

“ Is it not!- I would have you know, 
woman, that I am second in command here.” 

“ You may be first in command here. But 
you are not in command of me.” 

“ If you speak in that fashion I will put 
you under arrest. You are found on forbid- 
den ground, and will give no account of your- 
self.” 

She laughed, showing her white small 
teeth. “ What good will that do you ? You 
would have to let me go.” 

“ I can have you searched.” 

She folded her arms on her bosom and 
looked at him. 

“ On what plea ? ” 

The young man was embarrassed. He 
was aware that he had no right to insist, and 
he was dazzled by her great sparkling eyes 
and the whiteness of her throat. 

“No one is allowed to be nearer the pow- 
der depot than yonder stone,” he said, point- 
ing to a block of granite. “ That is well 
known to the whole district. And if you vio- 
late the rule for no wrong purpose, but merely 
from ignorance or in wilfulness, you would 
not make this mystery of your coming.” 

“ I make no mystery,” she answered, puz* 


2 6o 


LA ROSSICCTA. 


zled by the word, which was strange to her. 
“ But I come and go when I please, and the 
place is my birthplace, and I shall not ask 
leave of strangers and men from foreign 
towns.” 

“ Foreign towns ! I am of Palermo.” 

“You are a foreigner,” said Rossiccia, 
with the obstinacy of the peasant and the 
contempt of the Lombard for the men of the 
south. 

“ There is only one Italy,” said the soldier, 
with increasing anger. 

Rossiccia laughed. 

“The bundle of sticks is a fagot, however 
tight you bind it together ; it is never the 
trunk of a tree.” 

He looked at her in astonishment. 

“ Where did you get your ideas ? Who 
taught them to you ? ” 

“ I have thought about things ; no one has 
taught me,” she answered, and then she 
turned round and walked away slowly. He 
hesitated ; he was deeply angry, and a little 
disquieted and suspicious, but he let her go 
unmolested. She was a woman of the vil- 
lage ; he knew that it would be easy to learn 
all about her. 

He was annoyed by her insolence, but he 


LA KOSSICCLA. 


26l 

was moved by her beauty and her noble stat- 
ure. He saw by her clothes and her bare 
feet that she was only one of the poor people 
of the little hamlet of Trestella, but she had 
the carriage and the glance which an artist 
would have given to Tullia or Flavia. He 
was a young man, and easily excited by such 
charms. Life in the Polveriera was tedious, 
monotonous, and wearisome. There was 
constant anxiety in it, yet no action. There 
was no diversion except a game of cards or 
dice. There was little or no liberty, and it 
was hardly better in many ways than a prison. 
He was a lieutenant of artillery, and for the 
time being in command there ; he was an il- 
legitimate son of a noble family ; he had been 
educated well, but scantily provided for ; he 
was well made in form and feature ; lithe, 
slender, dark, graceful as any panther ; even 
the uncouth uniform and the close-cropped 
hair could not make him otherwise than pict- 
uresque ; and when he stripped to the waist 
in the close heat of the casemates, or plunged 
naked into the canal water to bathe and swim, 
he was beautiful with the old classic beauty, 
which is not dead, but only disguised under 
the shapeless clumsiness of modern costume 
and custom. He was by name Odone Pal- 


262 


LA ROSSICCTA . 


mestris, the latter being the name of his 
mother, who had been a singer in the theatres 
of the south ; nature had made him an artist, 
pressure from others and indifference on his 
own part had made him remain a soldier 
when his term of forced service had come to 
an end. He was now twenty-six, and was 
favored in the service through the influence 
of his father, who was attached to him, and 
had always seen him from time to time. At 
heart he was disinclined to submit to disci- 
pline, but he was ambitious, and saw no other 
way to become known than through the 
army. For some trifling act of insubordina- 
tion he had been punished by being sent to 
the powder fort in the marshes ; a post tire- 
some, dull, arduous, and of heavy responsi- 
bility. All his ardent, passionate, chafing, 
and galled life was put to torture there ; in 
the long, slow, hot days and nights his spirit 
wore itself out as an imprisoned animal wears 
off its hair against the bars of its hated cage. 
He had solicited a change of duty, and had 
written to his father begging him to support 
his prayer with the authorities ; but as yet 
there had come no answer to his request, and 
every week dragged wearily along, each 
seeming emptier and longer than the others. 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


263 


In such a moment and in such a mood the 
appearance near the fort of such a woman as 
Rossiccia awakened his imagination, and at 
tracted his attention as in other and fuller 
hours it might have failed to do. Her an- 
swers had irritated him, and he thought of 
her often in the long dull night after he had 
gone on his round for inspection, and changed 
the sentries and seen the lights extinguished. 

“Eh! ’1 e la Rossiccia; la Rossiccia ’1 k,” 
said the people to him when he inquired for 
a tall, fair woman with auburn hair and a sil- 
ver dagger run through it, and they showed 
him the low rush-thatched cabin a little out- 
side the village where she dwelt. 

It vexed him to be ignored and flouted by 
a woman so poor, so illiterate, yet so indiffer- 
ent ; and, as always happens, irritation in- 
creased the influence which she exercised 
over him. A score of times he swore to him- 
self to think no more of the red-haired jade ; 
and the mere sight of her afar off, walking 
through the flax-fields with her distaff, spin- 
ning as she went, or going down to the wa- 
ter-side with a bronze pitcher balanced on 
her head, overwhelmed all his resolutions 
and stimulated a caprice into a passion. He 
bitterly repented that he had blamed her for 


264 


LA kossicciA . 


coming near the fort ; and he would have for 
feited his grade and epaulettes to have per- 
suaded her to return. She never did so. She 
knew that nothing could give her back the 
wild oleander shrubs and the white briar 
roses of her old playground. 

One morning he saw her beating linen 
where a little space of water was shut off by 
logs of wood for washing purposes. The 
other women were beating and splashing and 
shouting and laughing clamorously, but she 
alone worked in silence, her fine arms shining 
like marble in the sun against the yellow wa- 
ter and the moss-grown logs. He approached 
the group and bandied light words with the 
other people, but she took no heed of him ; 
she did not look off her work. 

“ He is well to look at,” murmured one of 
the women to her ; but Rossiccia answered 
with contempt : 

“ These soldiers all strut like the red par- 
tridges in pairing-time, but they are nothing 
but slaves when all is said.” 

“ Men are slaves to a beautiful woman, 
whether they are soldiers or civilians,” said 
Odone as he lingered among the osiers 
gray and yellow in the heat. 

Rossiccia appeared as though she did not 


LA ftOSSTCCIA. 


26 5 


hear, and beat her linen more rudely and 
loudly ; it was not linen, indeed, it was only 
the hempen cloth of which her own shifts and 
her men’s shirts were made. 

He seated himself on a stone and watched 
her. He had unbuttoned his tunic, and, 
though his limbs were disfigured by the mili- 
tary uniform, he was a graceful and pictu- 
resque figure as he leaned his head on his 
hand and smoked, jesting with the others, but 
looking only at her. 

Rossiccia took no notice of him, but fin- 
ished her labor, threw the wet shirts she had 
wrung out in a lightly-twisted mass on her 
shoulder, and went homeward. 

“A sullen wench,” said Palmestris, angrily, 
to one of the other women. 

“ Nay, she is good-natured,” the woman 
answered, “but she hates the sight of sol- 
diers ; ’tis to her as the red dog is to the 
white one.” 

“ Why ? ” he asked, interested and curious. 

“ Eh, for no reason I know of,” she replied. 
“ But yon fort was built on a bit of waste land 
which she was fond of as a child, and the 
sight of all you who dwell in it is to her like 
a week of rain when the flax flowers.” 

“ She cannot hate it more than we do,” 


266 


LA ROSSICCTA. 


said the young man, with a laugh and a sigh. 
“ If she suppose that we can enjoy ourselves, 
she must think a rat happy in a wire trap.” 

“ Is it as bad as that?” said the woman. 
“ At least you get your victuals free and cer- 
tain.” 

To her this seemed the one supreme felic- 
ity of life : a few beans, a little maize-flour, a 
few drops of oil were all she got, and those 
were often wanting, and sometimes she had 
to make her bread with husks and grass- 
seeds. 

Odone did not hear her ; he was following 
with his eyes the now distant figure of Ros- 
siccia, tall and dark against the pale gray 
lights of the hot vapors which rose in visible 
mist from the flax-fields. 

“She has no damo f ” he asked, wondering- 
ly. “A woman without a lover is as strange 
and stupid a thing as an unfertilized vine.” 

“ ’Tis open for you,” said the woman, with 
a grin. “ Try, and you will taste that little 
lance she wears in her hair.” 

“ You tempt me,” he answered. 

He was tempted without her suggestion. 
The insolence and the indifference of Rossic- 
cia stimulated the admiration which her physi- 
cal strength and beauty had aroused in him. 


LA ROSS/C C/A . 


267 


She seemed to look down on him, as if he 
were some mere insect which crept on the 
masonry of the powder magazine. He was 
above her and beyond her in every way : in 
blood, in knowledge, in culture, in circum- 
stances. She could not scrawl her own 
name or read a line. He had passed difficult 
examinations with credit, and expected in 
time to pass into the staff. He had studied 
for pleasure as well as for necessity, and his 
natural talent was refined by culture. But 
he felt that he was nothing in her sight ex- 
cept a mere vassal of the Government. 

One night as the sun set in August he met 
her on the bank by the water-side, on the 
narrow towing-path which the horses used. 
She had a rope passed over her shoulders, 
and was doing horses' work, pulling a boat up 
stream. Her feet were bare as they trod 
heavily the hot, dusty grass ; her throat was 
bare, he saw the blue veins in it throb and 
swell under the pressure of the rope, and her 
breasts under her thin cotton bodice rise and 
fall in the stress of the labor like two waves. 
The boat she towed was constantly checked 
in its course by the reeds and water-weeds 
growing in the half-stagnant water ; the one 
man in it aided its progress as well as he 


268 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


could with a long pole, which he used alter 
nately to part the tangle of the weeds and to 
keep the boat off the bank. Odone stood in 
her way as she came, and kept his place pur- 
posely. 

“ That is not work for a woman/' he said. 

“ Yes, it is,” said Rossiccia, curtly. “ Wom- 
en are beasts of burden.” 

“ Why do you do.it ? ” he asked. 

“ That is no affair of yours. One makes 
pence as one can. Stand aside ! ” 

He kept his place. 

“ Ho, you ! ” he cried, to the man in the 
boat. “ Come up and take the tow-rope 
and give me the pole. It is a fine sight 
to see you leaning your lazy length down 
there ! ” 

The man looked up and laughed. 

“ She is a strong wench. She wants no- 
body to take up cudgels for her.” 

“ Will you come out of that boat ? ” said 
Odone, imperiously. 

“ Not I,” said the man ; and he put his 
pipe in his mouth. 

Odone, without any words, leaped from 
the bank into the boat, struck the pipe out 
of the other's lips, caught him by the waist, 
and tossed him, with no gentle hand, up 


LA R0SS1CCIA . 269 

onto the towing-path. The. man fell heavily 
on the dusty grass. 

“ Give him the rope,” Odone cried to her, 
as the other got sullenly and sulkily upon his 
feet. 

Rossiccia stood still, with her brown eyes 
wide open. 

Then, despite herself, she laughed. 

‘‘ You are an impudent meddler! What 
is it to you what others do? Say, Renato, 
are you hurt ? ” she asked of the crestfallen 
boatman, who was swearing every foul oath 
in his repertory. 

“ Give him the rope,” said Odone. 

“ That I shall not do. He has hired me,” 
she answered; and she bent her back and 
strained her shoulders, and drew the boat 
slowly through the reeds. Odone was forced 
to use the pole to keep it from grinding 
against the bank ; but when he had disen- 
gaged it he sprang ashore and seized the 
rope as it passed over her shoulders. 

“ I have said that you shall not do it ! ” 
he swore, with a furious oath. His hands 
touched her skin and bruised it. 

“ Eh ? You are no master of mine ! How 
dare you — how dare you ? ” she said, with 
equal violence, trying to force the rope out 


2 70 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


of his hands. The struggle was fierce, and 
the whole strength and volition of each of 
them were put into it. The boatman Renato, 
who had risen onto his feet, and was behind 
the soldier, seeing how wholly engrossed he 
was in his conflict with the woman, whipped 
out of his waistband the narrow sharp knife, 
called a cook’s knife, which almost all men of 
the populace carry, and, coming close up to 
Odone, struck at him with it under the shoul- 
der-blade. But Rossiccia, who saw the 
movement, intercepted it ; she let go the 
rope with one hand, and caught the knife by 
the blade before it could pierce her adver- 
sary’s tunic. In the brief collision the knife 
cut her badly ere Odone was aware that she 
was touched. The other man, seeing her 
blood flow, flung his knife into the water and 
fled, thinking that he had stabbed one or 
other of them. Odone and she, sobered and 
subdued, stood apart from each other, breath- 
ing heavily, the rope still lying upon her 
shoulders. 

“ You are wounded ! ” he cried with emo- 
tion as he saw the red gash on her palm : he 
was wholly unaware of Renato’s attempt. 
“Did I do it with the rope?” he cried, in 
poignant affliction at what he thought was the 


LA ROSSICCTA. 


2fl 


consequence of his own violence. “ Oh, for- 
give me ! — for pity’s sake forgive me ! I was 
mad ; I knew not what I did ! ” 

“ What come you meddling here for ? ” she 
said, roughly, while the pain of the cut flesh 
made her color come and go despite herself. 
u Let me alone, or I shall do you a mischief. 
I am not patient. Because you keep guard 
over a cask of powder, you deem yourself a 
fine gentleman who can lay the law down to 
everybody — — ” 

She stopped, breathless from the struggle 
with him, and sick, despite herself, from the 
smart and pain of the wound, round which 
she had hastily wrapped her skirt. 

He looked in her face with so strange an 
expression in his own that it disturbed and 
daunted her. 

‘‘You say I am mad,” he said, abruptly. 
“ Well, I may be ; but it is you who have 
made me so. Ever since that day I saw you 
by the fort I have been bewitched ) and to 
see you doing mule’s work for that lazy ras- 
cal made me beside myself. I love you — 
dear God ! how I love you ! ” 

“ Madonna mia ! ” exclaimed Rossiccia, 
and there were scorn, incredulity, and impa- 
tience in her tone ; no emotion, no pleasure, 


272 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


no gratitude. “ You will make no fool of 
me ! ” she added, sternly. “ I know that 
ranting, rancid stuff, and I am never duped 
by it. Get you gone ! You have done harm 
enough for one day.” 

She tried to pass him while the rope lay 
between them like a gray snake, and the 
abandoned boat floated motionless among 
the weeds. But he saw the blood from her 
hand soaking through the cotton stuff which 
enwrapped it, and heeded not her rude, un- 
feeling words, but fell on his knees on the 
lonely path and clasped her skirts. 

“ I have hurt you in the flesh,” he mur- 
mured, “but you have wounded me in the 
heart and stricken my very soul. I do not 
dupe you. I do not lie to you. I only love 
you, as God lives.” 

Something in the vibration of his voice 
made her eyes look down on his unwillingly, 
involuntarily drawn to his gaze by some mag- 
netic force. Suddenly all her face grew hot ; 
she believed, she understood, almost she was 
conquered. 

But she pushed him backward with her un- 
wounded hand and disengaged herself from 
his hold. 

“ If it be true I do not want to hear, I do 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


2 73 


not choose to hear ; men are nothing to me, 
and soldiers are less than men. Let me go.” 

With a quick, unforeseen movement she 
ran down the bank and springing into the 
abandoned boat, ferried herself over to the 
opposite bank. 

He had always borne himself well both as 
a soldier and a man. Her gibe was an in- 
justice as well as an absurdity, and, thrown 
at him in a moment when his passions were 
at a white heat, it shocked, stung, chilled, 
embittered him. 

“ I am a fool, and neglect my duty for a 
thankless fury,” he said in his teeth ; and 
without looking back, he walked away toward 
the fort, which was three miles off across the 
plains. 

When it was dusk that day Rossiccia re- 
turned to the spot where the boat had been 
left, and sat down in the reeds and waited. 
She had bound her hand up, but it was more 
and more painful as the flesh stiffened, and it 
enraged her because it would prevent her 
from working until it should heal. She 
waited to see the man who had done it ; she 
divined that he would come at dark to look 
for his boat and take it away. No one was 
likely to steal it ; it was well known on the 


274 


LA LOSS/C CIA. 


water, and could not be appropriated without 
the risk of recognition. 

She reckoned rightly : the boat was there 
with its load of rank grass. She sat down 
above it on the dusty bank and let her hot 
feet dangle in the water ; the frogs were 
croaking, the night-crickets were humming ; 
big water-beetles boomed through the air ; 
the lights at the night nets of the fishermen 
glowed here and there on the surface of the 
water ; all was dark and still, for there was 
no moon 

She waited some time ; the bats flew round 
her now and then, brushing her hair with 
their wings. At last she heard a cautious 
step of unshod feet treading the stones in 
the shallow bed of the stream ; she could see 
the outline of a figure by the faint luminance 
of the stars. “ Is that you, Renato ? ” she 
cried, as she slipped down from the bank and 
stood erect between him and his boat rocking 
among the sedges. 

He slunk back, afraid ; but she held him by 
the shoulder with her unwounded arm. 

“ I saw what you tried to do,” she said, 
contemptuously. “You tried to stab from 
behind. You are a knave.” 

“ I was in my right,” said the man with ex- 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


27s 


citement and no shame. “ The brute had in- 
sulted me — thrown me ; why did you inter- 
fere ? If you got hurt you deserved it. Why 
did you stop my knife ? ” 

“ You were a knave,” she repeated ; “ you 
did not dare to fight.” 

“ Only fools fight,” said Renato. “ What 
is steel for, save to help one on the sly ? And 
you made me throw my good little knife into 
the water — a good little knife which cost me 
three francs in the cutlers’ quarter in Ferrara 
itself!” 

“ I did wrong ; I ought to have kept it to 
slit your throat,” she replied, still holding him 
by the shoulder. 

“ What harm did I do you ? You say you 
hate those soldiers, and this one is a viper 
from the south.” 

Rossiccia was silent. 

A sudden suspicion occurred to the mind 
of the other, who was old, sly, and mali- 
cious. 

“ Did you tell him ? ” he asked. 

“ Not I. You are one of us, and he is 
what he is.” 

“ And you will not ten ? ” 

“No, I will not; so long as you keep the 
peace to him.” 


276 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


“Why do you say that? Is he your 
damo , then ? ” 

“ I have no damo . But right is right.” 

“ Right is right, and first of all rights one 
pays an offence off as one can. What do 
you wait for here ? ” 

“ Only to tell you that. Keep your peace 
with him, and I will keep my silence.” 

Renato laughed a little impudently. 

“ You may say what you like, and there 
are plenty of cutlers’ stalls, or a box of 
matches mayhap would serve him out best.” 

“ Well, I have warned you to leave him 
alone,” said Rossiccia, sternly, little believing 
in his threats, for he was known to be of 
small courage. He was an ugly little old 
man, born in the village, and thought of poor 
repute in it, though she, having known him 
from her childhood, was glad to do any work 
for him when he asked her. She left him 
and went home, ill at ease. Renato was not 
a good enemy, and that secret thrust which 
she had seen, haunted her like the remem- 
brance of a nightmare. 

It served the suit of Odone better than all 
his own eloquence. When the moon rode 
high that night, a shield of gold in the star- 
studded heavens, she lying sleepless on her 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


277 


rude bed of dried rushes, heard a voice with 
the accent of the south in it, singing beneath 
her open shutter a love-lay of Sicily. 

Esci dalla finestra, core ingrato, 

Core di sasso, ed anima crudele. 

Non mi fate morire appassionato ; 

Ditemi di venir, caro il mio bene. 

Sc mi dice di si, il mio core brilla ; 

Se mi dice di no, muore di doglia. 

The words were simple, but the melody to 
which they were sung was rich and passion- 
ate and fervid, with all the fires of the land of 
lava. 

Rossiccia kept her face buried among the 
dry rushes and made no sign ; but her heart 
softened, and her mouth smiled in the dark. 

A little later on, the song changed to one 
of triumph ; the Sicilian, despised, derided, 
and rejected, became her master. She was 
conquered and took pride in her own subjec- 
tion, as women do, and the proudest women 
most abjectly. 

On her side it was one of those great pas- 
sions which, at their onset resisted and con- 
temned, become the sole ruler of the life in 
which they are aroused ; and on his, al- 
though begotten of the senses, it had some 


278 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


higher sentiment in it than mere physical ad- 
miration. 

He had suffered and thought and studied, 
and his passions and his affections were 
strong ; the stronger because they had been 
starved in his youth. He felt that in this 
woman, though to others she was only a 
peasant with unshod feet and empty brain, 
and lips locked by ignorance, and a temper 
violent from excess of feeling, there was some- 
thing which made her akin to the better side 
of his nature. 

He had little liberty, but what he had he 
gave to her ; they met by the solitary banks 
of the stream or where the maize grew as tall 
as they, or at night he came under her window 
and she undid the bolts of the door noiselessly 
while her people slept. But it was very sel- 
dom that he got leave of absence ; the num- 
ber was few at the fort, and the responsibility 
was great. 

The difficulty and the rarity of their meet- 
ing gave it a zest and sweetness such as are 
never known to security. All day long she 
went about her rude tasks with a joyous bird 
singing, as it were, forever in her breast ; and 
he, grave, taciturn, and solitary, to his fellows, 
thought only of her as he paced th$ rounds of 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


279 


the dreary and dangerous place to which he 
was confined. 

They loved each other greatly, and too 
well to part or to obey the dictation of cir- 
cumstance. 

<r After all, who has any authority over us? 
And we wrong no one/’ they said to each 
other. 

There was no jealous wife on his side, no 
suspicious husband on hers, no conjugal jeal- 
ousies to be set up in arms between them and 
bar their meeting. They hurt no one by their 
surrender to their passion. They continued 
to meet as constantly as they could, and as 
secretly. Mystery is the very heart of the 
rose of love ; pulled open in the light of day, 
the love, like the rose, is spoiled and drops. 
The obligation to keep their meeting secret 
lent to their attachment that glamour and that 
charm which can never accompany sentiments 
laid bare to others. Something from it has 
fled, never to return, when a third knows the 
joy of two. 

He was but as a splinter of wood in the 
great grinding wheel of modern military ser- 
vice, and she was of no more account on earth 
than a speck of dust or a blade of grass in the 
towing-path ; but they loved each other with 


28 o 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


the old Italian passion, the passion of Paolo 
and Francesca, of Romeo and Juliet, of Gi- 
nevra and Rondinelli, which still is alive as a 
devouring flame in the land, and which ever 
and again sends the stiletto or the dagger 
straight through breast and bone. Per /’ amove 
is the cause of crime written against the names 
of half the toilers in the gangs of the galley- 
slaves of Central and Southern Italy. Far 
l amove is still to gentle and to simple the 
supreme pursuit, perfection, and perfume of 
life. Jealousy, cruel as the grave, and ca- 
price, inconsistent as the breeze, may be its 
companions ; but it is lord of life and of death. 

To meet, to be all in all to each other, to 
pass through the rest of the hateful hours only 
that the rising moon might show them heaven 
in each others eyes, this was all for which 
either lived as completely as the Angelica and 
Medoro of the amorous poet whose ink was 
held for him by a Cupid when he dwelt with- 
in the walls of that Ferrara which lay red in 
the setting sun beyond the fields of flax. The 
sear, chill, shallow, selfish, modern temper 
may have slain Eros elsewhere, and torn his 
wings in strips to stretch them under the lens 
of the object-glass, but in Italy he still lives, 
child of the stars and the moonbeams, com- 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


28l 


panion of the nightingales, sweet singer to the 
river-reeds, and if his soft hand close upon a 
blade of steel, he is only lovelier because also 
terrible. 

One night when he was bidding her fare- 
well, Odone said to her, “To-morrow and 
for five to-morrows I cannot leave the fort at 
night, nay, scarce by day; my captain goes 
at daybreak on leave to Sardinia, and I am 
left in command. It will be utterly impossi- 
ble for me to forsake my post. But we can- 
not live six days and nights asunder. Will 
you come to me there ? ” 

“ I hate the fort : it is cruel, it is danger- 
ous ; it is frightful to look at and to think of, 
dear ! ” she answered, with her old hatred and 
fear of it rising up in her, and finding no words 
strong enough to speak her abhorrence of it. 

“ Nay, I have loved it ever since I saw you 
under its pale walls,” he replied. “You 
would make it beautiful if you came to it.” 

“ But no woman can come to it ; nor can 
any stranger,” 

“That is the rule, no doubt; but there 
might be a way. Say, love, to please me, 
would you have courage to come thither if I 
found the way? It is agrewsome spot.” 

“ Go yonder ! ” 


282 LA ROSSICCIA. 

The blood left her cheeks at the mere 
thought. She was a woman, strong in body 
and in will ; but she was of quick imagination, 
and the place was horrible to her, in fact and 
in fancy. 

“ If there were no other way for us to meet ? ” 
he asked, his lips touching, as he spoke, the 
whiteness of her throat. 

She waited a moment, drawing her breath 
swifdy and painfully. 

“ Nay, to hell itself would I go, for that ! ” 
she answered at length, with the intensity of 
a great unspeakable emotion in the words. 
“ But you talk idly, beloved one/’ she added. 
“ A woman cannot come thither ; and could I 
come, it would disgrace you in your soldiers’ 
eyes.” 

“ Were it known — yes ; but if you would 
come as a lad, better still, as a conscript, it 
need be never known ; you would be seen as 
my friend, or as one on business sent; and I 
could give you the clothes and tell you the 
password. See, dear, it would be quite easy. 
I am left in command ; I can open the gates 
and close them. No one of the men will see 
anything strange. There will be no risk what- 
ever, and we shall have sweet hours, if all too 
few ; and in greater surety still than here/ 1 


LA ROSSICCIA. 283 

“ Surety ! In that place? ” 

“ Ah ? you are afraid of the place itself? 
Well, I can understand that it has terrors ; 
that it seems like sleeping on the very roof 
of hell, like kissing the live mouth of a can- 
non as it belches, but ” 

“ I am not afraid in that way/’ she said, 
quickly. “ What ! afraid for myself when you 
lie there alone so many a night ? Dear soul, 
you should not think such shame of me.” 

“ I hardly did think it, my golden-eyed 
lioness. But if not that, what kind of fear, 
then ? ” 

“ I have always feared it. It grew up there, 
a sickly-looking, hideous, cruel thing of brick 
and stone and iron, where the yellow broom 
and the dog-roses and the St. Joseph’s nose- 
gays used to grow ; and it is full of evil 
stuff to lay low gallant lads and the lovers and 
brothers and fathers of women. • And I have 
heard my uncles tell of war ; and it is the 
foul fiend of war which lives shut up there — 
yes ; so I am afraid.” 

He laughed in that familiarity with peril 
which breeds contempt of it. 

“ It is afoul fiend safe in irons, unless we of 
our own will let him out,” he said, carelessly. 
“ And, in truth, it is not as a fiend that we 


284 


LA ROSSICCIA . 


view the powder : explosives are as much in 
need for defence as for attack ; these plains 
have been oftentimes ravaged by many a foe, 
and may be so again ; then the death which 
sleeps under our hand will leap up like a wak- 
ing lion and roar out, ‘ Thus far shalt thou go, 
and no farther.’ ” 

“ I know,” she answered, impatiently, as her 
eyes looked across to the shadow of the fort, 
now dark against the moon, round, dark, 
sinister, like those numberless, nameless 
towers which rise without history or tradition 
under the cork woods and by the rocky coasts 
of Sardinia. It was impossible for her to put 
into words the dread she felt, which was alto- 
gether alien to either timidity or suspicion. 

“ Then, if you are not afraid you will 
come ? ” he urged, with a man’s narrow limita- 
tion to the personal. 

“ I said not so,” she answered, with em- 
barrassment. “ For you to come to me, that 
is as it should be : as it hath ever been be- 
twixt men and women ; but for me to seek 
you ” 

“ But I cannot leave, in common honor ! ” 
he cried, passionately. “ Any personal risk 
would I run of court-martial, of dismissal, of 
anything ; but to leave a post of danger which 


LA ROSS/CCIA. 


285 


is confided to me — that I cannot do without 
shame. If aught happened and I were absent, 
what would men say of such a cur ? ” 

“ Then we will wait. Six days and six 
nights are long ; the priests say that they did 
suffice for the making of the world ; but we 
shall live through them.” 

“ Then, if you think so, you have no love 
for me ! ” he cried, with the eternal rebuke of 
the lover who captiously asks for proof upon 
proof of that which he knows as certainly 
as he knows that the earth is under his feet. 
“ Think of me alone yonder, all alone ; for the 
comradeship which once was welcome is only 
irksome, tedious, intolerable now ; — six days 
and six nights without a word, a glance, a 
touch ! — it is a foretaste of death. Is not life 
short enough, that we should give away twelve 
times twelve hours to silence — to solitude — to 
separation ? When we lie dying shall we not 
say, ‘ All that time we might have been happy, 
and we were not ! ’ You are cruel ! What is 
it I ask of you? You do things more un- 
womanly when you throw the towing-rope 
above your breast. Well, I love you better 
than you love me. I will do what is shame- 
ful, disloyal, treacherous ; I will leave the fort 
when the moon is high, and come hither as I 


246 


LA ROSSIC CIA. 


have come to-night, and if any ill happen 
while I am away, I can but kill myself upor 
your body; you will know that I loved you 
then ! ” 

His face was pale as marble in his passion. 
His eyes flashed and glanced. The passion 
t)f his words vibrated through her, as some 
•chords of music will thrill through the impris- 
oned souls of animals. She caught his hands 
to her bosom, and kissed them many times. 

“ No, no ! I will come,” she said to him. 
“ After all, it matters nothing for me, if you 
wish it so. Tell me how ; tell me when. You 
must never do what would shame you for 
me.” 

That day he brought her a conscript’s suit, 
the ugly, coarse, poor linen clothes which are 
given to the soldiers in summer, with the rude 
gaiters, the leathern belt, and the peaked cap 
of the service. She hid them under the sack- 
ing and dry rushes of her bed, and tried them 
on when night had fallen and the little house 
was still. She had only a small cracked 
piece of a mirror and the cotton wick of an 
oil-lamp wherewith to view herself ; but she 
smiled as she saw how straight and comely 
her limbs looked, and how tall and fine she 
stood in this boy’s jerkin and breeches, with 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


2S7 


her hair tucked up in a great coil upon hef 
head, so that the cap hid it from sight. She, 
who had never heard of Rosalind, looked 
Rosalind to the life, even though her clothes 
were so rude and mean. 

It was a dark night, for the young moon 
had set and clouds obscured the stars. The 
heat was great, so great that darkness seemed 
rather to increase than to dispel it. She who 
was used to go barefoot and clad according to 
season could scarcely make her way with the 
weight of the gaiters and boots, and she did 
not dare remove them lest such removal 
might betray her sex. The familiar paths, 
the plains known to her from her infancy, the 
outlines so engraven on her mind by long as- 
sociation that she could trace them in the 
dark, seemed no longer the same, because her 
own personality seemed the same no more. 
She got over the parched and dusty soil 
clumsily, slowly, with a gait wholly unlike her 
usual fleet and careless tread ; but although 
she felt as if some leaden hand plucked her 
back every step as she went, she drew near- 
er and nearer to the fort, made visible by a 
little light which he had promised her to set 
by one of the loopholes, and which sparkled 
starlike in the darkness, 


288 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


As she approached it her eyes, grown used 
to the dark, could trace the ugly pale building 
on its solitary mound. It was a dread tryst- 
ing-place, a grim bower for love ; but she 
pressed onward with a sensation which she 
could not have analyzed, half fear, half tri- 
umph over fear. She went straight up to 
the bolted iron gates ; the sentry, with a 
sharp rattle of his musket, summoned the 
shadow, which alone he saw, to stand and 
give the password. She gave it, and added 
as her lover had bade her, that she had come 
there to see the officer left in command. 
“ Pass in,” said the sentry, satisfied. The 
soldier at the gates asked her more ques- 
tions and held up a lantern to look at her, 
but he saw only another young soldier like 
himself, as he thought, and after awhile she 
got through the doors and within the build- 
ing. Odone met her as he would have met 
a brother or a comrade, drew her within his 
own chamber and closed the door. 

At dawn he unbarred the gates himself and 
she went homeward. No one who saw her 
among the sleepy and sullen men kept on 
watch-duty thought for a moment that she 
was other than what she looked, a conscript, 
a little taller, brighter, more elastic in move- 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


289 


ment than are most of the wretched youths 
dragged from their homes under the colors. 
She went over the ground backward to her 
village as silently as a vapor wreath moved 
over the river-bed. None of her own people 
knew of her absence ; their maize paste and 
bread was ready as usual for them, on their 
bare breakfast board ; and when her father’s 
querulous, piping voice demanded his pipe 
and drop of coffee, both were there. With 
such complete security and immunity had the 
midnight tryst been kept, that, when night 
came again and the church-bells tolled the 
hour over the marshes she put on her boy’s 
clothes as a matter of course, and took her 
way again toward the fort. 

This second night was radiant from the 
stars, so that the moon was little missed, but 
her passage over the marsh and the flat 
fields was more open to sight, were any there 
to see. The country was so lonely that she 
met no one ; but, unseen by her, the man 
Renato, who was cutting reeds — stolen reeds 
— half-way to his waist in stagnant water, 
looked by chance at this figure of a young 
soldier flitting through the shadows, and 
looked again and again more curiously and 
closely,, and said to himself : 


290 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


“ May an apoplexy take me ! If that lad 
were not a lad and a soldier, I should say he 
was Rossiccia’s self ; that is the turn of her 
head, though the hair looks cropped ; that 
is the skim of her foot, only it is clogged by 
the leather.” 

His curiosity and malice being aroused, he 
wandered along through the osiers and wil- 
lows, keeping her in sight for half a mile or 
so, until he saw her strike straight across the 
flat fields toward the place of the powder 
fort. He was stupid, but he was cunning ; 
he grinned as he dragged himself through 
the sedges : “ Two turtle-doves nesting on 
a cask of gunpowder, pretty dears, pretty 
dears ! ” He grinned again, and stood still 
with his sickle in his hand, gnawing the black 
stump of his pipe. 

If it had been a man of their own plains 
he would have seen no harm in it ; but a 
stranger, a Sicilian, a man from over-seas, 
where fire-mountains burned all the year 
round, and the men, made of fire too, slit 
your throat did you but brush their plough- 
share with your heel ! — that was different, 
that was against every law of the soil, written 
and unwritten. 

Whom could he tell ? Her father ? he was 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


291 


a bedridden gaby. Her brothers ? they were 
children who looked to her for the bread 
they ate. Her neighbors ? ’twas no business 
of theirs ; they would wag their heads and. 
laugh. 

No matter : they should not sleep in peace 
much longer, he promised himself, as he 
worked among the dusky willow rods, watch- 
ing ever and again the lights hung out by 
the fishermen against their nets for fear the 
fishers should perceive his pile of cut reeds 
and rods. The ignorant mind is slow to 
take in an idea, still slower to trace out a 
plan ; but it is tenacious of its resentment, 
and holds fast to its gratification of grudge 
and reprisal. 

Thus his little, narrow, malignant brain 
worked on as well as it was able at one 
thought : the lovers who were there within 
those gates of hell. Not that he had any amo- 
rous jealousy or envy ; he was too hungry 
and too poor a creature to cherish passion, 
but he hated the man who had flung him up 
out of his own boat onto the sand like a dead 
mole, and he would have liked to come be- 
tween that scornful foreigner and his good 
luck. For it was rare good luck to have the 
Rossiccia for a ganza j though he himself was 


292 


LA ROSSICCIA . 


too concerned with picking and stealing and 
scraping halfpence together to have much 
sense or sight left in him for women, he knew 
that she was good to look at, arid to love, 
white- skinned, strong- limbed, full - breasted 
wench that she was, drawing a barge along 
as easily as other women would draw a child’s 
go-cart. Had he not seen her do it ? Had 
she not done it for him ? And now she was 
a fine foreign soldier’s mistress, and went to 
her popinjay among his casks and kegs of 
death ! An angry sense of envy, which was 
only not jealousy because he was too old and 
too indifferent from long absorption in the 
sorriest means of existence, stirred in him as 
he splashed among the reeds and looked 
across at the round pale tower of the powder 
magazine. The form of Rossiccia was no 
longer visible between the building and the 
water. 

He chewed his pipe-stem moodily and 
thought ugly thoughts ; and as a little shrew 
swam by him, stoned it because he was will- 
ing to hurt something. 

It pleased him to think that if he could only 
get inside that building, a few sparks from 
his pipe would send these lovers into the 
blackness and emptiness of that vast vault 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


293 


which over-arched the stars. But he could 
not get in, he knew that : neither he nor his 
pipe could ever pass those ceaselessly march- 
ing sentries who paced beneath the walls. 
He bent down again and began to cut more 
reeds : it did not matter to him where he cut 
them, none of the osier-beds were his, he 
took them as he took the quail or the teal, 
when and wherever he found them. If he 
could have driven his knife into the stranger 
who had affronted him, and seen his blood 
flow, he would have been immediately ap- 
peased, and would have borne no ill-will later 
on ; but, having been balked of his just re- 
venge by Rossiccia’s intervention, his hatred 
had grown and deepened and strengthened, 
and added to it was the sense of injustice 
which rankles in one who has been denied 
his right. He pondered long with such dull 
wits as he possessed, sharpened by envy and 
malice and natural cunning ; and, first stack- 
ing his stolen osiers in his boat and taking 
them down stream to his cabin on the bank, 
unperceived, he cleaned the river mud off 
himself and procured a lift on a market cart 
going at dawn to the city with a load of 
watermelons and pumpkins. 

He had taken a few coins which he had 


294 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


kept hidden in a hole in the thatch, and 
shook them in his closed hand in his pocket, 
as he jolted on among the smooth and the 
wrinkled globes of the green fruits. 

“ It will buy a fine big box of matches,” 
he thought with a chuckle. “ Or a nice 
black slow worm with a fiery eye in her 
head. Or a good little knife like the one 
that rusts in the mud/’ 

He felt proud of his omnipotence. He was 
only an ugly old man, with only a few pence, 
and a hut made of rushes and wattles, but his 
powers for evil made him feel like a king. 
As the wagon rolled through the slumbrous, 
grass-grown streets of Ferrara he looked at 
the opening shops with a cruel smile of con- 
tentment and coming vengeance. 

He lingered all day in the town, unable to 
decide what he would buy. But at the last 
he chose a rough provincial thing, a long 
taper-like slow-match and a blasting fusee 
in connection with it ; a match which would 
creep, creep, creep gingerly and securely for 
half an hour, until it would reach the fuse 
and scatter ruin round it. It was sold to him 
in one of the low dens of the town by a 
maker of fireworks of a common sort, who 
asked no questions and might be safely 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


29 $ 


trusted to forget the sale. Cleopatra never 
clasped her asp more fondly than he hugged 
the ugly coil which he carried away from the 
shop. 

“ My good little knife, my good little 
knife ! ” he said to himself as he drifted out 
of Ferrara on one of the barges ; “ she will 
be sorry she made me put it in the water ! ” 

He had been a stonemason in his early 
manhood, and he had watched the building of 
the powder-magazine with a shrewd eye not- 
ing where the work was scamped, and soft 
or porous stone used and ill-baked bricks, 
He knew its weak points, and knew that if a 
man on moonless nights could conceal him- 
self often enough and long enough to have 
time for the operation, he could easily pen- 
etrate through the masonry at the rear of 
the building. The idea pleased him, and he 
dwelt on it fondly. He liked to think of 
all those men pluming themselves on their 
safety, while he, when the moon was young, 
should be working away in the rank grass 
and coarse sand to send them all to per- 
dition. 

Eh ! the Sicilian had tossed him up onto 
the bank like a dead cat and had said never 
a word in excuse, and she, the jade whom he 


296 


LA R0SS1CCIA. 


& 

had always admired and praised, had treated 
him like the sod of earth beneath her foot. 
Where would they be when, some moonlight 
night, he should sit in the sedges and watch 
the column of smoke tower into the air, and 
feel the whole solid ground shake and crack ? 

Eh ! it was a fine thing to have been a 
working-mason, and to have known the 
tricks of the trade, and to have a few pence 
to spend in powder ! He was so elated at his 
own capacity and cunning that he hugged the 
fuse to his breast and kissed it before he put 
it safely away in a covered corner of his belt. 

The absent commander prolonged his ab- 
sence in Sardinia, loath to return to the fort in 
the flax-fields, and Odone commanding in his 
stead remained tied to his dangerous duty. 

The canicular heats were at their greatest, 
and many of the soldiers were ill with fever 
or dysentery, or the vague, nameless nausea 
and weakness brought on by life on these 
lands in summer time. The earth around 
the powder depot was less healthy than when 
the bilberry and bearberry had sucked up the 
moisture of the soil ; and the miasma mists 
were heavy and poisonous where the slug- 
gish waters crept beneath the duckweed and 
vallisneria. 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


297 


A 


His days were overfilled and anxious and 
arduous ; he had no one to share the burden 
of responsibility with him ; the young man 
under him in command was laid low in the 
marsh fever, and he could not quit the fort for 
an hour. 

Only when the sun set and the welcome 
coolness of night descended on the plains did 
he throw off his heavy load of care and sur- 
render himself to the consolations of a love 
which had had as yet no time to wane or pall, 
but which by mystery and difficulty and rarity 
retained the first ecstatic charm of its earliest 
hours. 

Whether the men knew or guessed aught 
he could not be sure, but if they did they 
were discreet and sympathetic; there was no 
one who cared or dared to wonder at the fre- 
quent visits of the strange young soldier, when 
the heavens were full of stars, and the owls 
hooting above the gray thickets of the willow- 
rods. 

They were as much alone in those hours be- 
fore the dawn as though they had been un- 
companioned in a virgin world. The old man 
Renato, who alone knew of their trysts, said 
nothing ; he was intent on his own work ; 
chuckling to himself as he drilled and chipped, 


298 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


unseen, unheard, and in the dark, to think 
what fiery splendor would celebrate their 
union, ere the moon should again have leisure 
to grow large. 

One night when morning was quite near 
Rossiccia was awake while her lover slept. 
He had taken some touch of fever himself ; he 
was weak and chilly and over-tired ; the in- 
sidious poison of the soil had crept into his 
veins and stolen from his sinews their elas- 
ticity and force. 

He slept the heavy dreaming sleep of incipi- 
ent illness, and she watched him, leaning hei 
elbow on his pillow and her cheek upon her 
hand, listening for his every breath and pray- 
ing over him all the dim imperfect prayers she 
knew. 

The low light of a safety-lamp burned by 
the narrow camp-bed. The small high win- 
dow was open to the air. The heat was 
great. The only sound in the stillness was 
the croaking of frogs in the distant water and 
the monotonous tread of the sentinel pacing 
without under the wall. All was so still that 
she could hear the beating of her own heart, 
and his, as though the same life moved them 
both. She did not stir a finger lest she should 
awaken him, but she knew that it was near 


LA XOSSICCIA. 


299 


daybreak, and that soon she must arise and 
go, lest in the light of day she should be seen 
and recognized. 

She was about to try and rise without dis- 
turbing him when her anxious ear was caught 
by a slight crackling noise, very faint, such 
as might be caused by the moving of an insect 
among dry grasses ; but there was no grass 
here in this barren labyrinth of brick and 
stone, and such a sound could mean but one 
thing — that thing against which all the senses 
of the dwellers in it were forever on the stretch 
and strain by night and day. 

Her first impulse was to awaken Odone. 

But as she looked at him by the rays of the 
lamp, the extreme fatigue and the deep slum- 
ber expressed in his attitude and on his feat- 
ures so appealed to her for repose that she 
resisted her impulse and turned the rays of 
the lamp from him. Besides, she thought, 
what was there that she could not go and see 
as well as he ? She took the keys, which lay 
beside him, and the lantern, and went softly 
out into the passage. She could hear the 
tread of the patrol on the stone floor of the 
corridor and the step of the sentinel on the 
ground without below the walls. They were 
pacing to and fro with even steps, evidently 


3oo 


LA kOSSICClA. 


dreaming of no danger nigh. It might be her 
fancy that there was any harm near ; the little 
sound might be the rattle of a mouse between 
the masonry, so she told herself; but she took 
her lantern and the keys and stole on tiptoe 
to the great doors of the adjacent powder- 
rooms. Strong as she was, it cost her a 
mighty effort to turn them in the wards and 
then to turn the hinges in their sockets. The 
impenetrable darkness of the great vaulted 
windowless chambers alone met her view; 
close by, the outlines of barrels of melinite 
and other explosives were visible in the rays 
of the lantern ; there was no sound at all. 

She had been dreaming, she thought ; she 
began to draw the doors toward her again, 
afraid lest the patrol should pass and find her 
there. But at that moment her ear was 
caught again by the tiny crackle as of a mov- 
ing insect. It came from the left-hand side of 
the chamber. She set down her lantern with- 
out the door and went in among the dread 
merchandise of death, her bare feet falling 
noiseless on the stone. 

Far away against the right-hand wall she 
saw a little spark, no bigger than the light of 
a fire-fly when one sparkled among the flax. 
But a mortal terror gripped her heart as with 


LA ROSS/CCIA. 


301 


a hand of steel. She knew what such a 
spark in such a place meant for every living 
thing within the walls and without them for 
many a mile. Not an instant of time did she 
lose in hesitation, nor did a sound escape 
from her lips ; a superhuman power entered 
into her veins, her limbs, her whole being. 
With a lightning flash of knowledge she real- 
ized that the man whom she loved, the sol- 
diers under his command, the villagers whom 
she had lived with from babyhood, her father 
lying helpless in his bed, one and all, de- 
pended on her and her alone to save them 
from a sudden and ghastly end, by violence 
and fire let loose upon them in the hush and 
peace of night. Without a second’s pause 
she sprang onto the barrel nearest her and 
leaped from it to another, and another, and 
another, heedless of the imprisoned terror 
which her feet touched, and in a few swift 
bounds she reached the place where the 
spark glittered : the small red, cruel dot of 
fire made by a slow-match. She stooped and 
saw the fuse, long, black, sinuous, made of 
the common blasting powder which the man 
Renato had bought in the gunner’s shop in 
Ferrara. She caught “the wicked worm of 
death” in her hands, clutching the burning 


302 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


spot, and held it high above her head : then 
slowly, lest a spark might fall, retraced her 
steps through the dark, walking on the heads 
of the barrels. The match quickened with 
the motion ; the flame brightened; it burned 
her hands, the heat bit and gnawed through 
the flesh of her fingers ; in any moment it 
might reach the powder in the fuse and blast 
her into space, and bury her in the ruins of 
the building which she tried to save. But 
she did not loosen her hold nor falter on her 
way ; the fire caught the linen sleeve of the 
conscript’s shirt which she wore, and hissed 
up her wrists, and in little rings and tongues 
of flame circled and licked her arms ; but she 
continued to bear it erect above her head 
and out of the doors of the powder-room into 
the naked safety of the stone corridor, and 
there cast it down into a tank of cold water 
which was kept there ever filled in case of 
peril, and the fiery snake sank harmless in 
the flood, hissing and spitting on the liquid 
surface of the hostile element. 

It was barely in time : her charred and tor- 
tured hands had lost all power to hold any* 
thing, their sinews and muscles glowed like 
red-hot wires, the hempen sleeves were burn- 
ing to her elbows. 


LA ROSSICCIA. 


303 


She staggered down the passage-way to 
her lover’s room, trying to hide her burning 
clothes from him as he arose, startled out of 
his sleep, only half awake, and but half con- 
scious. 

“ Dear love, it is nothing,” she said, faintly. 
“ Be not afraid ; the match is out. Only go 
you, if you can, and close the doors ; I could 
not. And if they find them open they will 
blame you.” 

By sunset on the morrow she was dead. 
Her beautiful arms were like two blackened 
branches of a burnt tree. But she died lean- 
ing upon her lover’s breast, the soldier’s and 
the people of the village weeping round her 
bed ; and that fiery death in the full height of 
a perfect passion was a lovelier portion than 
life, lonely, obscure, abandoned, and forgot- 
ten could have been. She had broken off 
the perfect flower of life in its full bud. So 
best. 





































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